>are you miminizing the crimes saddam has in fact committed (e.g.,
>gassing kurds or contributing consciously, voluntarily, and non-trivially to
>the starvation of his own people while he and his officers live in the lap of
>luxury)?
Who amongst us would voluntarily join the ranks of the starving? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Refusing to join the ranks of the starving is not at all the same as being responsible for their starveling status.
Saddam's crime against humanity is that of possession and actual use of weapons of mass death and taking and holding power illegitimately. Obviously these are not crimes that the Bush government is genuinely concerned about, since Bush and the US government is guilty of exactly the same crimes, but on a larger scale.
>true, saddam hussein did not massacre several thousand in new york and
>washington, dc, but if *that* is the determinative difference between saddam
>and al-qa'ida, then that alters the substance of your argument about
>afghanistan, as far as i can tell. indeed, it shows that afghanistan really
>WAS what we think it was: US vengeance, with the side-effect of the liberation
>of a downtrodden people from a thoroughly repressive regime.
Still, some good has come of it perhaps?
I think the real issue is which of the two regimes, Iraq and USA, is the lesser of the two evils? I don't think you can honestly decide which side you are on, on the basis of which is good and which is evil. Unfortunately, unlike Afghanistan, it is also hard to see how any good will come out of a war between the US and Iraq.
So it is reduced to the lesser of the evils.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas