Now, go out and get some “larnin”, and come back when you are about 40, and well informed. Thanks for your college try. Don’t take all those college profs visions as the truth. Trust me, I have been to college, and if your view of the truth differs from theirs, your grade will be probably a C at best.

Do your own research, Dude!

1.) you think the Iraqis led an idyllic life under Sadddam, (only the BAATH Party did, and only if they did not come under suspicion), and

2.) you think the Kurds were protected by Saddam? (think no-fly zone, American and British pilots), and

3.) you think Saddam could be taken at his word.

We all know he tried to make deals. Mostly bad deals for everyone except himself.

You need to spend more time researching the horrors of the Hussein regime, his intentions to control neighboring countries and ALL the middle east oil, and the corrupt Oil-for-Food program. There is a good DVD out now that will give you a peek into how the Iraqi people were treated (tortured/murdered.

However, when you’re comparing the situation now with the situation before the invasion, I’d say the Iraqis were better off even though they were under the rule of a horrible despot.

At least they had reliable running water, electricity, cheap fuel. At least they could go to work and earn a living and education. The Kurds had full autonomy and security (totally protected by Saddam).

So if Saddam had allowed unprecedented access to US inspectors (rather than UN)… and thus proved their lack of WMD programs… and also allowed UN elections, and support for the US on the Israeli/Palestine affair…

that’s a helluva offer… and one that I think would have lead to a potentially much more stable Middle East than we have today… and a path to democratic reform that would have been far more concrete and independant.

And if it all turned out to be lies… the US still could have invaded (and maybe then they could have done it with the number of troops really required)

What’s frustrating to some of us is that so many people have forgotten all this. I feel like I’m reliving debates I had a year ago. It’s like being Sisyphus, and I find myself typing once again (as I did so many times) that Saddam had brokered over a dozen agreements like this when it looked like his back was against the wall and as soon as the threat of force was withdrawn he broke them. For God’s sake, how many times did he kick out the weapons inspectors, only to let them back in once it looked like he might face military force again? How many times did the inspectors tell us he wasn’t allowing them to inspect sites he agreed to let them inspect? Etc. Etc.

And it still would have left a mass-murdering butcher in power in Iraq, would have continued a regime that literally killed thousands of innocent Iraqis a month, at least according to the U.N. and most human rights organizations.

So yes, agreeing to YET ANOTHER deal that Saddam would almost certainly have broken (just like he broke ALL the others) might have made for a “more peaceful” world, if you think of allowing a tyrant to peacefully slaughter his own people as “peace.”

I don’t know if your site takes the necessary HTML in comments, but this pretty much summed up how most of us felt about it back then: