I wrote this as a reply to the 48% thread but it got closed before i finished.
A european's point of view:

About abortion:
You can be opposed to abortion but you have to face reality, abortion WILL take place so you can best regulate it. This way you can gain information about who is having one and give that group more education about preventing. This will cause a better long term effect imo.
Abortion is bad, don't get me wrong but instead of trying to ban it, there should be a more structural fix.
Op een geheel ander vlak stelde zich, in het voorjaar 1990, een constitutioneel probleem. Begin april keurden Kamer en Senaat een wetsvoorstel goed tot liberalisering van abortus. Op 30 maart had Koning Boudewijn aan de eerste minister schriftelijk meegedeeld dat hij, de derde tak van de Wetgevende Macht, volgens zijn geweten deze wet niet kon bekrachtigen.

Op grond van artikel 82 (thans artikel 93) van de grondwet, stelde de ministerraad vast dat de Koning in de onmogelijkheid was om te regeren. In dat geval oefent de ministerraad de grondwettelijke macht van de Koning uit. Deze raad bekrachtigde de abortuswet (3 april 1990) en kondigde ze af. Op 5 april beslisten de Verenigde Kamers dat aan de onmogelijkheid tot regeren een einde was gekomen, zodat de Koning zijn grondwettelijke prerogatieve opnieuw kon uitoefenen.
Perhaps Negative can shed a light on that cuz I can not find a proper translation.

About gay marriage:
Perhaps it should not be called this way.
But face it, homosexual humans are here to stay. They deserve the same rights as others.
Stuff like buying houses and inheritance and sofort.
So create a law to give these people their rights to share their lives with one and other on an equality basis.

About wars:
Afghanistan and the Taliban were targets of the west before 9/11.
The taliban was in the news regularly, perhaps someone recalls this:
n a display of extreme prejudice against the Hazara people the Taliban have destroyed two of the world's tallest ancient statues of Buddha in Bamyan, Afghanistan
http://www.hazara.net/hazara/geograp...ha/buddha.html
Noone saw what was comming.

Iraq: There were a lot of protest against this war but keep in mind that people who were in favour of the war had no need to protest.
Once again face it, sadam called 9/11 'the mother of all attacks' . He was mistreating his own people by keeping all the 'food for oil' he had to himself. The west delivered the weapons of mass destruction to him (before he became an outcast) so they new some bout what he should have had. They gave him a list with weapons he had to give intel about and (with his last minute input) he failed to comply.
Resolution 1441 was vague about the actions that would be performed if sadam would fail to comply once again. This is what caused Germany and France to oppose the action performed by the USA.
About the WMD's
The Associated Press announced that UNMOVIC inspectors have found dozens of engines from banned al-Samoud 2 (SA2) missiles, which were shipped out of Iraq as “scrap metal.” Most recently, UNMOVIC agents found 20 SA-2 engines in Jordan, along with a great deal of other WMD materials. Officials discovered an identical engine in a Rotterdam port in the Netherlands and believe as many as a dozen extra SA-2 missile engines alone have been transported out of Iraq and remain unaccounted for. Inspectors believe at least some of these engines have also reached Turkey and hope to search Turkish ports in the near future.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=13835
I think the USA sortof lost track of some of the WMD's, which is a shame offcourse since it was the primary reason to fight this war.

North-Korea: I have heard several americans talk about North-Korea as if they could walk over it like Afghanistan or Iraq. They are wrong imo. North Korea lies in a much more difficult area (strategic wise), they have at least mid-range missiles which would impose a big threat to ships.
They have a highly motivated army because that is about the only job that actually pays some money. The best way to win this war is diplomatic imo.

From my european point of view I find it disturbing that whenever one has some sort of critisism agains our allie, the usa, one gets viewed as being anti-american.
A good friend is one that tells you the truth no matter what, puppet governments are not a basis of a stable relationship.
One thing the terrorist like to see is a devide between europe and the usa.

One more thing:
Was the cure for the mad cow disease (kill themm and burn them) medevil?