I'm having a real difficult time wrapping myself around your concepts of when a war is "justified" and when it isn't. It looks like a war to help hungry Africans is okay, while a war to prevent a tyrant from obtaining fission weapons is not. A war to remove a leader in Bosnia that is ostensibly participating in massacres is okay. Somehow, a war to remove a tyrant in Iraq who has also participated in massacres--using nerve gas--is not. I suppose this leads to the conclusion that there must be a minimum number of people massacred to make a tyrant worthy of bringing down. What is that number, and has Iraq reached it?

No, that can't be it. Milosevic is accused of the murder of about 10,000. Saddam Hussein has killed over 100,000 Kurds, and that's just one incident out of his entire regime.

In any case, apparently having judged the "individual characteristics" and "overall merits" of Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti and the 1998 Clinton attack on Iraq, the Left applied whatever convoluted parameters that it uses to decide whether or not a war is a good idea, and decided that massive protests were not necessary.

What am I missing?

I don't think I'm missing anything. These protestors are out there for one reason only: because there is a Republican president they want to cut off at the knees. Period. End of story. They don't give a shit about Iraq, and probably couldn't point it out on a map to save their lives. This is about Getting Bush.

All those previous wars I mentioned, the simple answer is that they stayed home and didn't protest because Clinton was Their Boy, a Leftist, and not a Republican. These protesters are collaborators with the Democrats at worst, useful idiots for the Democrats at best.