<HTML>In a message dated 1/22/2003 6:43:23 AM Pacific Standard Time, dperrin@comcast.net writes: ...<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> One can oppose Saddam, indeed denounce him and hope he soon falls, and denounce Israel's occupation and contribution to terror through surrogates. Is your mind big enough for that, Joanna? Or are you gonna fall into the old predictable trap of saying, "Well so-and-so does it too! So there!" Israel has nuclear weapons, so let Saddam have some. Hell, al-Qaeda too. Only fair, right? As bad as Israeli policy is and has been in the territories and in Lebanon, you cannot compare its internal society to that of Saddam's Iraq. DP</BLOCKQUOTE> Oh please. If the world is expected to be terrified that Saddam Hussein MIGHT get nuclear weapons, can we please allow a few moments of terror that George Bush and Ariel Sharon already have them and explicitly preserve the option of using them, in GWB's case pre-emptively now. The best description I heard recently of Israel: morally they are in about the same condition or worse as when the Old Testament prophets used to rail at them. The person who said this did not make the leap to well, the international community could impose sanctions and cut them off, but it would be possible to make that leap. Those of course are separate issues from human rights in Iraq. I cannot imagine anyone disputing that Saddam Hussein's regime is horrible, brutal, despicable on many grounds. However I DO dispute whether the military wham bam bomb and leave approach is the best option for improving the human rights situation. I am struck by the effects of decades of citizen diplomacy (plus of course some careful electioneering at key points) in helping set up an enviroment conducive to less-violent change in the Soviet Union. I do not think the Iraqi people want to wait on decades of citizen diplomacy, but I am very sure that military action can only make matters worse within the country, within the regional environment and in terms of international law. DoreneC </HTML>