I refuse to argue potentials with anyone. Nothing really meaningful or even truthful can be said about all of these modalities- its really just a clever way of arguing opinion without dressing it up as such.

Nobody know what would have happened next year and whould would be in power in 3 years. So arguing phantom corpses is stupid.

However, we invaded Iraq on the foundation of its imminent threat to the US. That threat was not real, not justified and either fabricated or immagined.

Therefore our very real pile of corpses and our ACTUAL assortment of shattered lives was unjustified.

Tom wrote:
"I don't know how you came up with the idea that somehow killing a few people--by accident--while stopping a mass murderer is inherently immoral. "

Thats because we were not doing it to stop 'mass murder', Tom- we are more than happy to let a status-quo of mass murder persist in dozens of countries around the world, even in our allies that we support. If you are going to change justifications like you change underwear, then you just pulled on hypocracy to replace lies or failure. Either way, its still pretty dirty stuff.

And its not like we stopped all the murders in anycase.

Dozens of people are dying from the unrest in Iraq today, you want to tabulate those ACTUAL corpses in?

And the people we killed were not by accident. If we know that somne number of collateral damage will be incurred, it is not accidental when those statistics become actual fact. If those deaths had been the resul of a just war (self defense), then I would not count them as murdered people. But as such, it is murder and it was wrong.

"Now, if you want to argue from the point that even if a leader is annihilating his people, we have no right to interfere"

No, Tom, its an open question if we have the right to interfere or not. But that is CATEGORICALLY NOT WHAT HAPPENED HERE. We went to war for the sole stated aim- announced before the UN, NATO, the American people and congress- of disarming a threat to our country.

And your attempt to re-moralize this struggle is empty and shallow in any case because, as I have said before we are allies with people who do just as bad to their own people.

And Saddam was killing his people just as much before sept-11th as after sept-11th, where was our desire to set it right then?

No, we made war predicated on the WMD and terrorist ties. Don't sit here and lie, outright to me, and expect me to believe you.

"Uh...more than one analogy can be equally accurate. Maybe you should have gone to seminary school. "

Uh, any analogy and all can be accurate. Maybe you should have taken a critical thinking class in college.

Please do so now, drop the attempt to hammer this into some absurd mold. Iraq is not starwars. Iraq is not the neighbor next door killing kids. Iraq is Iraq. Bush is Bush. And our stated justifications for war are our stated justifications.

Challenge to Tom:
Tom, this entire tac you are on is one big wiggle. I would say that because you can not make a convincing case by addressing the facts, you are attempting to make your case by injecting predications anew (the whole liberate thing), arguing by analogy (which at best can never be right and at worse is impossible to falsify) and discussing potentialities woth me.

In any case, its all just bullshit.

My challenge is drop the bullshit. Lets argue fact and not fantasy and literature.

Davin L.