I still can't figure out Bush's little war

No, and no.

i can;t even find republicans who honestly think so either...

i'd suggest that ousting Saddam will make the world generally a more HUMANE place (if you regard dictatorships of fear as fundamentally inhumane), or just plain BETTER place - but safer and more peaceful? perhaps marginally, but it's debatable

of course the US/UK alliance is NOT going to war with Iraq just because they don't want a dictatorship of fear in Iraq - but they genuinely do seem to consider his remaining in power a threat to them. Not many other people do. Its funny because surely everyone in the world would rather Saddam just dropped dead right now and this prompted a dramatic regime change in Iraq that resulted in, if not a democratic republic, then a moderate Islamic state that followed the suit of its neighbours, respected said neighbours (esp. Iran) and continued to distribute oil for the benefit of the world (and esp. the US) until that runs out and they're completely fucked once again.

One of the lines of debate in the commons today is that, particularly persued by IDS, 'it is in the British National Interest' to go to war against Iraq. We've heard all the arguments but at the end of the day this seems to be what it comes down to.

The Tories are mental for the British National Interest. Unfortunately for them it's not the 1850s and IDS is not Palmerston, so people will actually go "Oh what's that then?" and not just ph34r the Magic Phrase.

Yeah, I was just going to say that, what the hell is the National Interest? We get that in the US too, kind of, but Bush backs up his claims with his "weapons of mass destruction!" yammering.

Quite honestly, Bush, Blair and Saddam should jsut be locked in a room together and forced to whip out their dicks to see whose is bigger and then they're done.

and then grease up for some greco-roman wrestling.

i am sincerely yours disgusted from Tunbridge Wells

re: final ultimatum: chem and bio and "suitcase" weapons might be a tad more dangerous if the LEADER'S BEEN EXILED and they're in the hands of power-jockeying wannabes that we know even LESS ABOUT

"we need to thoroughly control and monitor these horrible rogue weapons by making sure they're in control of unaccountable subordinates"

yeah, i know that telling Saddam to "get out of town" wasn't a real offer, but it the fact that even our final-final-this-time-we-mean-it ultimatum changed the goalposts yet AGAIN is beyond absurd