If you are intent on killing the man, why not just do it and avoid bombing the children?

Has anyone heard much about the Kurds lately? No? That's because nobody wants to piss off the Turks, who have their own, um, issues with their Kurdish population, to the tune of a 15-year-long war with Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

Are you parading the fate of the Kurds out now to persuade me that this is at the bottom of Mr. Bush's "Get Saddam" initiative? Why now, when the Turks have been using NATO and American supplied weapons for years to kill the Kurds within their borders with nary a peep from our leaders?

Are we the great humanitarian Kurdish supporters now, suddenly? Are only the Good Kurds of Iraq the beneficiaries of our high-mindedness, or will we extend this concern over Kurdish wellbeing into the backyard of our staunch ally?

For more on the ever-complex Kurdish situation, see hereand here. With a history like this, I have grave doubts that there is any concern for the Kurds beyond trotting them out to try to make America look like a rescuer rather than a frightened superpower. If protecting Kurds had been the main issue, it would have been on the front burner the whole time.

Your statement concerning the frequency of anti-aircraft fire on American planes in no-fly zones apparently comes from a Pentagon press release which itself admits that the Iraqi number of hits has been zero. Further, the no-fly zone in the south is three times as big as the one over Iraqi Kurdistan, uses 4 times the personnel and 3 times the aircraft. Apparently it's not all for the Kurds, though I haven't anything against the Shi'ites in southern Iraq.

I don't believe that Saddam Hussein is a peace-loving leader. I don't believe that the Saudi leadership is peace-loving either. Yet we have not targetted them, even though we have far more reason to be worried about the screws loose in that kingdom and the trail of cash leading to the people who have attacked New York and DC. Why is this?

The argument that we haven't seen any WMD so Saddam must have them or else we'd be able to find them (??) is insufficient for me to support the bombing and blockading of an entire nation, against the opinion of many nations whose friendship we may need someday, hard as that may be to imagine.

I am alarmed that you claim knowledge of the future, which is a sign of delusion. I am deeply alarmed that my government seems committed to retaliating before the fact based on what might happen. This is otherwise known as "first strike".

When the Japanese did this in 1941, it was called "infamous". Rightly so. I do not want my nation, which I love very much, to become "infamous" by its own definition.

For what doth it profit a nation, if it win the entire Middle East and lose its sacred honor?

Regards--
Mary Anne