The answer to who was going to succeed Saddam was either Kusai or Uday. That has changed. I wonder if you can see the improvement.

RE: "I meant that ,today, because so little money and so few people are involved in the war against Iraq, people are far more concerned about their personal well being (thus the economics) than it was the case during WW2."

I still don't get your point. Are you saying people are too content to worry about moral issues or that their personal well being is all that matters? You still seem to be avoiding the issue about how many nations were involved on the two occasions and that numbers should be irrelevant if there is no good justification for war. You also haven't answered the question if the US should have stayed out of Europe since Germany didn't attack us. I'm afraid that without straight forward answeres to these questions, you simply sound like you have a double standard.

RE: "How can a civilized country argue that assassinating a dictator is against the law and yet accept killing thousands of innocent citizens who never did anything wrong to your country? In my real world, starting a war, unprovoked, with the intention of occupying the invaded country, is far far worse than bombing it once or sending a commando to neutralize its leader.

Well I agree assasination would have been a better option, but you ignored my response that this had been tried by others but failed. Saddam was not an easy target for assasination Raoul. It's not as simple as you make it sound. His shell of protection (his red guards) had to be removed. As far as unprovoked goes, just because you ignore alll the justifications that have been given doesn't mean there aren't any. Do you forget Kuwait and Saddam's atrocities? How can you moralize and condem others yet ignore these human tragedies?

RE: Iraq was undergoing an embargo and the private companies that would have profited from it are so few and the money so little compared to the entire trade exchange of those countries, that it becomes a baseless argument. As I've written previously, Iraq was France's 27th commercial partner, by order of importance, while the US is the 5th.

This is so full of holes it's hard to know where to start. First the embargo was failing because France and Russia had refused to respond to Saddam's ejection of inspectors with force until after 9/11. Do you think that was just for humanitarian reasons? Big contracts mean big profits and big contributions. We know for a fact that Saddam used bribary on your beloved UN yet you seem to think it is impossible this happened in France or Russia. Even without outright bribes it is clear they had economic ties at risk by standing up to Saddam. List US ties as well if you want, but we did have the morals to ignore them for what we thought was right.

As I've said over and over US trade with France is at best loosely controlled by our government. Trade with Iraq was directly controlled by Saddam. Saddam had the power to cut it all off if France offended him while they risked (they thought) little by offending America because no one person cut shut down our trade. I've also said that your numerical rankings mean nothing because small differences in trade volume can mean big differences in numerical ranking. I have asked for actual trade volume numbers in currency terms many times and have never seen a reply. If the value of Iraq trade was 1/10 the US but could all be lost by a single decision it was more important than risking a few % of US trade.

RE: Hans Blix (when Saddam was in Power) couldn't find WMDs, and neither could Kay (when Saddam was no threat anymore). To pretend that all those WMDs are safe in another coutry defies logic.Why didn't he use them in the first place, if they existed? Whom would Saddam trust ,outside, to deliver those WMDs to? Why would he give them away if he needed them (if they existed)?

Hans Blix wasn't any where close to Iraq before the US started moving troups over their yet you and others seem oblivious to the fact that real threats of force were required to motivate Saddam's compliance. Blix admited he was not getting full cooperation so France and Russia's "logical" response was then to obstruct clearer threats of force. Does this really make sense in your "real" world?

I don't pretend the weapons are hidden in another country. I doubt that very much, but think it's a minor possibility. It's possible they are still hidden in Iraq and were hidden so well they could not be retrived in the face of the US's rapid advance. No one predicted the speed with which we advanced Raoul, not even US optimists. That could answer both your question as to why they haven't been found and why they weren't used. Most likely, however, in my opinion is that Saddam's programs had been pretty much wiped out and he was either trying to preserve the means to rebuild them or fool his neighbors into thinking he still had them with the antics that made EVERYONE think he still had them. While there may have been a few doubters no one I recall here claimed Saddam did not have WMD in the debates over the buildup.

RE The US invaded a foreign country that had nothing to do with what triggered the urge to do that (9/11) ; this isn't courage, revenge or self-defense ; it's imperialism.

I know you have real trouble comprending this, but a war on terror has to be about prevention not response because they won't show their hand by a military buildup like all former wars. You can't simply respond either because most of the players never come out of the woodwork. As far as we knew Saddam had WMD and both Clinton's have confirmed this belief. Even you must realize Saddam's anger at the US for leading the world in kicking him out of Kuwait. Did you consider that US imperialism? Saddam is also a known supporter of terrorism. While arguements have been made against a possible future connection none of these are concrete. You have to be ignorant of human history to think that two enemies will never coordinate to defeat their greater enemy.

I agree that if Saddam were a fine leader of his own country, friendly with his neighbors, and took a firm stand againstr terrorism his enmity with the US would not have been sufficient cause for us to attack him. While the US' primary rational was WMD, I felt that the many other reasons for removing Saddam including his continuous abrogation of the GW1 truce and brutal treatment of his own people justified removing him even if his WMD capability was significantly degraded. I also believe those that were not Republican's (and many who were) who supported the war initially had similar feelings. I said that before the war as did many others including Bush. This is why these postwar justification comments are pure bullshit.

You and the others using the term so loosely need to look up the definition of imperialism because it simply doesn't apply. Using terms like that simply shows an extreme lack of objectivity.

No nation had the relative power the US had right after WW2 yet it did not use it to build an empire. No nation has ever had the relative superiority the US has now except the US back then, yet we have to listen to people like you hyperventilate about imperialism after stepping in time after time to stop genocide and chaos then leaving.

Regards,
Mark