nooooooooooooooooooooooooo :(

Its about time they declared war. The world has had to put up with Saddam for long enough. Everyone will be thanking Bush once Saddam is gone.

I saw an interesting letter in the local newspaper a week or so ago, I just thought I’d mention it here.

Basically the letter says, ‘Oh you’re just attacking Bush because he’s Republican. Look at all the deaths that happened in the Clinton era.’

My opinion on this is not so much that he is being attacked for being a Republican, but for being a general idiot. A very large number of things Clinton had on the right track, Bush whacked (bad pun if a pun). Putting millions of American lives at risk? Just another page in the book of destruction Bush will have written. Thank GOD, I will be old enough to vote in the next election.

Everyone attacks bush cause he is the dumbest president in quite sometime.

Of course I’m in the minority here, but I’m not afraid to still state my view that quite frankly, UN approved or not, Saddam has to go. He has ignored 24 separate UN resolutions over a 12 year period. There is NO WAY that any more time, any more diplomacy, would see him have a miraculous change of heart.

Noone disagrees with this fact. Noone disagrees that he has systematically oppressed, tortured and killed those who oppose his regime or his views. This is a man for whom the gunshot of a dissident being excuted in his palace is his signal to wake every morning. Noone disagrees that despite some token ‘disarmament’ of a few missiles due to allied forces breathing down his back, he still has stockpiles of some of the deadliest toxins known to science. We all agree he has to go and Iraq needs to be freed from his 3 decade reign.

Both sides in this argument acknowledge these things. The only difference is that one side believes, even after 12 years, that a ~few more months~ might just do the trick. The other side has some common sense. Let’s just get this over and done with. We were always going to have to deal with him eventually. It might as well be now, rather than a few more months, or years, down the track.

Ask any Iraqi refugee that now lives in Australia their opinion (as several journalists in major newspapers have done over the last week). I think you will find they totally agree with the course of action being taken taken by the US and the 45 other countries that are offering troops or logistical support in this war. Saddam’s time is up. Sometimes early action can save lives in the long run. I believe this is one of those occasions. Let us not make the mistake of 1938 again.

Joanwa: Very well stated and I agree with you. However, I still disagree with the tactics the current US administration has used to allow an act of war, very heavily. I do support the troops, as THEY are the ones risking their lives, NOT Shrub.

You do have to admit, Shrub plays a good game with the press. Somehow the masses didn’t notice when Bush nonchalantly linked Saddam to terrorists, shortly after Operation Enduring Freedom started (or whenever, I don’t know nor am i bothered enough to look. They were close enough in proximity for me. And yes, I know someone will point out the lack of will to be informed, but it is nearly midnight and I am posting my opinion and I just want to be done with it.). Then, it became an attack on Saddam’s regime, then, again, directly on Saddam. Although jerkily, in my mind, the game was played, the public saw a smooth talker who talked (painted?) America into a corner.

Yeah I will agree that the link between Saddam and terrorists (particularly Al Qaeda) is pretty much BS. In fact it’s well known that Bin Laden (as a fundamentalist Muslim) hates Saddam Hussein, because he is far too secular and materialistic for Bin Laden’s ideals.

The terrorism link as you say was snuck in to add to the ‘justification’ for the war. But it’s a very tenuous link and isn’t the real reason (which is somewhat unclear but lies somewhere between regime change and disarmament). Bush’s tactics in the evolution of this war are dodgy, yep I agree 100% :)

But if we must have it forced upon us…even if illegitimately, might as well point to the good things that will come out of it – more freedom and safety in Iraq, and less proliferation of bio/chem weapons in the region. Of course these benefits rely CRITICALLY on the allies:

a) making the war quick and clean, with very few civilian casualties; and

b) not abandoning Iraq afterwards but funding reconstruction and development of stable government. The Afghanistan thing is a joke – they really should have done more there. They basically left it in almost as bad a situation as it was in under the Taliban (except in Kabul).

Anyway very late. Bed time :)