You don't sound liberal or left-wing. I find your posts refreshingly unblinkered.

Well said.

My only criticism would be the title. It was never a "just war". The oxymoronic concept of forcing democracy on a people is absurd.

You have to fight for, bleed for, die for - earn - a democracy. To last, it can't simply be handed to you.

could you give me some examples of the torture we used vs. the torture used by saddam. i would like to see how they stack up side by side

Willie... does it matter how they stack up side by side? Is this a frickin' competition? Or are you looking to see if we can somehow justify ourselves? "Oh, he was worse than we are, so we're OK." It's NEVER OK. It's always appalling.

Jack, torture is an unfortunate byproduct of the human condition, especially under stress. What you failed to mention is the fact we punished our people when they tortured others; Saddam rewarded his. No moral relativism there.

Also, I don't believe bringing democracy to Iraq is our primary mission. The sanctions were ultimately untenable. Iraqis were firing at our planes every day for 10 years, and they had successfully corrupted the oil-for-Kofi program.
I don't care if Iraq resumes its status as a cesspool, as long as the dysfunction remains internalized, and Saddam isn't plotting the assassination of U.S. presidents again. This was an unfortunately necessary smackdown of a tyrant who still coveted Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Removing him was the mission.

Velociman:

What you failed to acknowledge is that the torture was not done under stressful conditions. We held these guys as prisoners in our prisons. It was sanctioned and prescribed by the US gov't, not rash actions by soldiers fearing for their lives.

Secondly, the sanctions were by the UN. The UN said, "no invasion". Yet Bush used the sanctions as his reasoning. If the UN had the global authority to set the sanctions, shouldn't they also be able to say how they are to be enforced? I guess not if that didn't fit with Bush's plans.

If we want to take a whack at Saddam because he was a military threat to us, or even the region, have at it. He wasn't even close to being a threat to anyone but his own people.

Regarding Saddam's coveting of Kuwait and SA, so what? Bush's daddy removed that threat 12 years earlier. He had no means to consummate his desires. He was militarily impotent.

I'm sorry Jack, but when I read your post here, I think you're starting to integrate into French thinking. Get out of there quick! Or lay off the Camambert.(;

When I look at the list of parties that registered to run for the elections in Iraq, I think this war is justified. I saw that list a little over a month ago, more than half were named Islamic this or Islamic that. We certainly don't want another Iran, or do we?

I think this war is basically about Political Islam Vs the rest of the world. The fact that not all the rest of the world is physically fighting in Iraq does not matter. The UN made itself irrelevant by being corrupt and I'm not excluding any country from that accusation. Fact is America was attacked within its own borders by political Islam. If I recall correctly, in the aftermath of 9/11 everyone was yelling revenge. Now that revenge is taking place, some people appear to have second thoughts. War is just ugly, nothing we can do about that, and of course everybody's pain feels the worst to themselves. And there are those of us with a weak stomach who simply can't handle the sight of suffering, regardless of the reasons.
Political Islam needs to be annihilated one way or another. Given America's status in the world, there was no other way to go about it. Since the enemy is not a particular country, but one who's nucleus is located in the heart of the Middle East, I say America is at the right place at the right time. Since the enemy has many different faces, the rules of engagement are altogether different. We need to constantly adapt and rethink the proper tactics to eliminate this vicious enemy who seeks to rule and destroy.

To Mike:

1) The "torture" you refer to was basically humiliation, not the lopping of limbs or raping of sisters. A far cry from real torture. Secondly =, there is no indication the upper levels of the DOD approved this. It was abberant behavior, properly punished.

2) We did indeed allow the UN to set the tenor of the sanctions, and it was a bloody mess, and allowed corruption on a scale unsurpassed in the annals of world oversight. That does not mean sanctions were not in order, just that the implementation of them was corrupted from the outset. To suggest Saddam should not have suffered sanctions for his invasion of Kuwait is to suggest Hitler's invasion of Poland was a simple misunderstanding.

3) I posit Saddam WAS a threat to our nation because he was shooting at our planes every day and attempting to assassinate GHW Bush. That rises to the level of Hit List to me. Does it not to you?

4) Your flippant So What? about Saddam's intentions on the Saudi oil fields I find shameful. And I do not understand what you mean about "Bush's Daddy". The threat was NOT removed. That was the whole problem. GHWB went wobbly.

A tyrant erased, and yet there are naysayers and whiners. I'm not saying the war is going well, but what wars do?

And, yes, I misspelled aberrant.

Shameful, indeed. What is shameful is your continued attempt to justify an invasion that cannot be justified. 20,000+ killed or wounded. That is shameful.

Shooting at our planes is your justification? Please....

An attempt to kill Bush The Elder? From 1993? MY goodness, you're grasping for straws!

Simply because Saddam wanted something does not mean he had the means to take it. And we knew, at the point when we invaded that he did not have the means. Bush The Elder had taken care of that.

I suggest you read up some on what our government has sanctioned in regards to torture. Put in a Google string of "torture +iraq +pentagon" (sans the quotes) as a good starting point.

Regarding the sanctions, you are right, the UN screwed them up magnificently. So your solution is to invade? We're gonna need a lot more soldiers if we're planning on invading every country that has fooled the UN.

Why not just leave the UN? It is clearly an anti-American organization. We pump billions into it's festering bowels, with nothing close to legitimate "return on investment" (for the lack of a better term).

Regardless, simply because they botched the sanctions cannot in any way justify an invastion.

Now don't get me wrong. Desert Storm and our asskicking in Afghanistan were fully warranted. In fact, if anything, I think our response in Afghanistan was too measured.

Iraq is a whole 'nuther can-o-worms.