Friends Don't Let Friends Talk Politics

I've decided that it's actually really hard to talk politics with people who are both your friends and a different political persuasion than one's self. I don't have any idea how it got started, but my boss and one of my residents decided to come up and start talking to me this evening at my desk shift about how the United States has no business in Iraq and asking me about my perspective on the issue. Well, obviously, I think the United States needs to continue to fight terrorism wherever it exists, and getting rid of it in Iraq by maintaining our military presence there is a good thing, not a bad thing. So I said so. Bad idea. It sparked a 90-minute debate on humanitarian-versus-Mongolesque necessities in American foreign policy, and we finally had to break off the debate because it was getting to the point where they were getting ticked at me for being a heartless person, and I was getting frustrated with them because they didn't know about anything that's been going on in our intervention in Iraq. They seriously thought we were just going over there and killing random Iraqi citizens for satisfying our lust for oil. Aargh! From now on, I'm screening all of my friends who try to debate me on Iraq for two things: knowledge of the topic (as opposed to just blithely following whatever they've heard on the CNN 30-second rampage against America), and the skillful ability TO debate, rather than using the age-old standby of "but why do we have to kill other people?"