> Yes. And I don't think one can overlook the "unfinished business" angle as
> a possible motivation for the current intervention... recall W. talking
> about how Saddam tried to kill his daddy,
>
> -- Luke
I wouldn't put this intervention aside and then try to work out what motivations compelled people to pursue it ten years after the earlier one. I don't see this war separately from the sanctions regime.
I think that Bush and co have been sufficiently idiosyncratic so as to stamp themselves all over this chapter, witch such force that we tend to think of it as a separate book. Unfortunately this was a departure point of many anti-war arguments: that we shouldn't start a war. That would come as news to the Iraqis, who have been under daily bombing for the last ten years. But having cast the argument in terms of stopping a war from starting, Bush can thank them for having helped detach his actions from the continuum that preceded them. He can stand on top of a million dead and brag about how his liberation only killed a couple of thousand civilians.
Thiago