re: What's at stake
We are dealing with people, or even a subculture, that would consider it a moral triumph to bathe your home town in nerve gas.
You make a good point about our morality being at stake.
But you have to make a decision: how many American lives is our moral high ground worth?
This is not a facetious question. It may have a real and valid answer in terms of a number, especially in regards to military personnel.
It can already be shown that we have lost many military lives by avoiding tactics available to us that would have saved American lives at the cost of innocent Iraqi lives. This comes under the same category.
I'm open for suggestions as to how to deal with this problem.