Because of our actions, in the eyes of many Arabs now, Saddam is a martyr instead of the thug he exposed during his occupation of Kuwait. I'm sorry Tom but you simply don't have a grasp as to what the tiny ripples of actions each day have on the collective psyche of the Arab world as it plays out in the decades after. You think in terms of your white bread world where the food on your table is a given thing. Your wife doesn't have to walk around in a veil for fear of her life. Your entire economy isn't tied to some macho superpower who've propped up corrupt and brutal regimes to ensure the bulk of your natural resource go to them. You aren't seeing in your local media pictures of children in your society with arms and legs blown off by American bombs.

So let's say we hadn't challenged Saddam and he annexed Kuwait and had ambitions for the next domino such as Saudi Arabia. Do you think the Arab world would've simply stood by and allowed that? Hell, he'd have become the target for Osama instead of us given that his secular army would've taken control over Mecca. Yeah, Iraq had a good size military but we've seen the huge holes in his strategic abilities. His army scattered and ran when faced with any opposition at all. His airforce was a farce. His Scud missiles mostly fell far from their intended targets.

And we're leaving out Israel in this scenario. What's wrong with allowing them to take care of the problem themselves? They have a superb military and air force that could've done the same damage we did to his command infrastructure. The Arabs hate them already. It's not like they'd damage their reputation further and in many ways, if their actions against Saddam helped protect his agression against other Arab lands, maybe they'd actually gain some respect.

Things are always black and white to you Tom. It's like this big slap fight. One guy hits, you hit back. The cycle continues indefinitely. Problem is it goes nowhere, proves nothing, and is self-perpetuating.

Let's say Saddam built a nuclear weapon. As I've stated before, he couldn't use the thing without the retaliation turning his country into glass. Shoot, maybe he'd nuke Iran. All your ranting about how we should do something about that scary country would've been handled for us. (this is sarcastic by the way. I wouldn't want to see Tehran nuked. There are actually many very reasonable people living in that country.)