Here's the thing:

How come this hasn't gotten more ink in the media?

After all this is mass destruction.

Not weapons of mass destruction. Not weapons of mass destruction programs.

Mass destruction.

Where's the outrage?

Ara,

Well, its not "news" - in the sense that its not unexpected or odd; as they say, 300,000 people murdered - that becomes "run of the mill" after a while.

Also, it doesn't fit the script that the left wants playing right now...right now, the script is BUSH LIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!; start talking about how disgusting the Saddamite regime and the left will get all uncomfortable.

Mark:

There you go again.

I'm a liberal and I was for the war -- before, during and after. I think Bush the right thing. The world is a better place without Saddam in it.

I also believe that this POTUS did the wrong thing in lying, exaggerating and/or spinning the truth to make his case.

Go figure.

Even if Bush lied, and I don't especially give a damn about that, it was still worthwhile to send in the 3rd infantry, the Marines and the Brits to bump of the saddamites.

I talk here and there about oil supply stability being a goot reason to pull blatherskite Arab governments out of power, and I think that what we did in Iraq was appropriate. But knowing we stopped the continuous mass killing of their own people by going in there gives me even stronger satisfaction that they knocked over the saddamite regime.

In addition, knowbody knows for sure that we, or a clean Iraqi government, won't actually find some seriously threatening chemical, biological or nuclear materials buried in tunnels around Iraq. It's a big country.

So Bush and Blair have no need to explain anything to me. They did the right thing even if I don't think we or the Iraqis are likely to get a western style government out of it.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Ara,

Well, since you qualify your statement, I'll be gentle. In other venues I've asked for people to state the lie that President Bush said - for you, I'll just ask to provide even the exaggeration that President Bush said.

The case for liberating Iraq was airtight then, its airtight now and it'll always be airtight. We should have done it 12 years previously - for precisely the same reasons.

I find the accusation of BUSH LIED!!!!! vile, and even the insinuation that things weren't on the square absurd.

You did do it 12 years ago, but the cat came back...he just couldn't stay away.

Arnold,

Let me get this straight, if a president lies to get the country to support a war you approve of it's OK. What if it was about a war you don't approve of? Would it be OK then?

Mark,
The case is only airtight if you believe hook, line and sinker all the things that have been said regarding Iraq and you take all of it to an absurd conclusion. I would suggest that right now the evidence that Iraq was a threat before to the US direct is fairly well contradicted.

The whole rational about liberating Iraq is a none starter, that was the only "goal" of the war Bush publically was willing to negotiate away. He said many times that if Saddam capitulated to UN resolutions that he could remain in power, presumably continue to rape pillage an murder. So the liberation of Iraq was not even a stated goal just a side benefit.

Currently any WMDs that Iraq may have had in the summer of 2002 are now in the hands of terrorists. So to suggest that we are now safer from the scenarios envisioned by the administration if we didn’t attack right now, without delay is really kind of an exercise in fuzzy logic. I don’t see how this invasion did anything other then put our military force right in the middle of the hornets nest. And now we have to untangle a political Gordian knot. We are going to ask the Kurds who were already enjoying some level of autonomy to now submit to a new government we are going to try and craft a government that most Iraqi's will accept and also be acceptable to us, that is not just a difficult task, it may be impossible.

It may also be very possible that Clinton's air strikes that have been characterized on the right and ineffectual "Wag the Dog" maneuvers actually neutralized the lions share of any spare capacity that Hussein had and more of the same would have been more then effective to continue to keep Hussein at bay indefinitely.

Finally you would have to look at the evidence thought very jaundice eyes to come to the conclusion that you have come to, I'm not accusing you of being wholly wrong, just that your opinions are in now way a product of a through vetting of the evidence.

Rick DeMent,

Thanks for you very thoughtfull post; I really do like debating these things with people who are (a) polite and (b) have clearly put some thought into what they are saying. That said; you're wrong.

The case for war would, in my view, only be non-airtight if we were to insist upon "stand up in court" evidence plus proof positive that the threat is imminent. Because I don't hold that the evidence must be "stand up in court" and neither do I insist upon the absurdity of an imminent threat, I can say that the case was and is airtight. It all boils down to what, precisely, one hopes to do in such a situation.

My view of the matter is that we are engaged in a War on Terrorism and the only way we can win this war is by carrying the fight directly into the enemy camp. Anything less than large bodies of US troops in the Middle East is the recipe for ultimate failure in the War - and ultimate failure eventually means a WMD attack within the territory of the United States. I realise that others can question my strategic thinking here (and, of course, criticise the very similar strategic thinking coming out of the Bush Administration) but its simply illogical to say that what we are doing is anything other than an attempt to win the war.

In my view, the place called the Middle East is a hopelessly muddled mess; the people there are locked into poverty, ground down under tyranny and brimming over with resentments. This is where the terrorists come from; you'll note the dearth of terrorists who come from, oh, Akron OH - this is because the people there are not locked into poverty, ground down under tyranny and, aside from the occasional gripe, probably not seething with resentment. Until the Middle East ceases to be what it currently is it will remain a standing threat to us - a happy hunting ground of terrorists and thugs who want to use their human cannon-balls to bring death and destruction. To win the war means to change everything - we can't change everything from the outside.

In addition to the necessity of enforcing change in the Middle East, which requires our troops to be there, there is also the tactical benefit of our troops there: some writer who's name currently escapes me likened the US and allied troops in Iraq to "carefully hung fly paper". This is entirely true - they are, in a way, bait; and they are working splendidly. Each and every terrorist who treks to Iraq to launch himself against our army is one less terrorist who can be launched against the people of the United States. Rather than plotting their next WTC, our terrorist enemies are plotting how to kill US troops in Iraq - bad, yes; but would you rather them plotting the death of well-armed and trained US soldiers, or the deaths of American children?

Given the strategic and tactical needs of fighting this war to a victorious conclusion, it appears to me that the case for liberating Iraq was airtight - even if Saddam were just a run of the mill thug who had never actually bothered us. The fact that he was in possession of WMD (unless you want to believe that after he kicked out the inspectors in 1998 he voluntarily and secretly disarmed himself), he was an aggressive tyrant and he was sponsoring varied terrorist organization - including, possibly, al Queda...but even if al Queda wasn't in the mix, its good to keep in mind that our war is against Terrorism, not individual terrorist groups.

Let's accept for the sake of argument that the omnibus rationale of "War Against Terror" is valid, and that it justifies U.S. invasion against any country that the U.S. believes is either supporting or harboring terrorists. In that case, why hasn't the United States occupied Palestine (where we would presumably do a better job than Israel), Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iran, North Korea, the Ukraine, Northern Ireland, Algiers, Yemen, or any of the other countries whom we know harbor terrorist cells, whether knowingly or unknowingly? And if we were do do so, how long would it take for our military to spread so thin that the draft would have to be re-instated, just to keep the war effort alive?

Terrorism exists for a reason. Mark hits it right on the head when he says that people in Arab nations have lived under tyranny and are seething with resentment. Yet while they do resent their despots, why do they also resent the United States? Because of our foreign policy, which from their perspectives seems to support the very regimes they have been crushed under.

The fact that the United States seems to be "doing the right thing" is good, certainly; but we must remember that the view of history in the Middle East is measured in centuries and millennia. We have a long track record of bad behavior working against our credibility.

Perhaps, while we're using our military might to remove potential threats to U.S. safety, we might use some diplomatic might to improve our stature in the Middle East.

John Kusch,

The fact of the matter is that had we gone in and "Dresden'd" Baghdad, we'd be held in greater awe and respect in Iraq and the Middle East these days. The reason German and Japanese revenge was non-existent to US and allied occupation forces after World War Two is because we'd proved that we didn't view Germans and Japanese as fully human and we'd kill them in great, big bloody batches. Barbaric, huh? It is that - and I'd never agree to unleashing another LeMay or Harris upon the enemies of the United States and its allies; but the fact of the matter remains the same - and the more backward and ignorant the populace, the more likely the mailed fist will get fastest results.

So, we wont be as brutal as necessity requires - and this, in turn, will require us to play a very delicate political game. A combination of force and bribes - knowing all along that this will result in some of our more hard-headed enemies not getting the message; so they'll still try to kill us. Given this reality, we cannot just up and move against everyone all at once - even if we instituted a draft and raised a 25 million man army, it wouldn't do the trick for us because military force in and of itself will not win this war. We have to do that much-maligned "winning hearts and minds".

This, I think, is what you're getting at in your last sentence - and you're also right that a lot of the resentment in the middle east is resultant upon at least the perception (and sometimes the brutal reality) of American support for the very same tryants who repress the people and breed the terrorists. But, we can't just declare war on all of them, all at once - we're in this to win, not to kill; a lot of killing will be done, but we'll win when the situation in the Middle East is not conducive to producing terrorists.

What this boils down to is that we'll use a mix of methods - armed might against some, a combination of armed might and bribes against another, pure bribary against yet others...

Uh.... i'd like to know what the hell is wrong with the "hippies" who were against the war! Their chants were pretty much based on "No murdering innocence!" etc.

With all of the mass graves being found, i find it "funny" that a bunch of peace loving people who can accuse their own nation of "murder" won't touch international issues like this with a 45 ft pole and would prefer to continue branding their president a "liar".

I think some people out there should get their priorities straight damn it!

(PS: the term hippies is used loosley.. no offence to the no hippy/beatniks who were opposed to the war, but if you still fit under this catagory, well... get your priorities straight!)