I agree with you Norm - I think you've stated your point very well.

The apparent need of some to view everything as a dichotomy of absolute good and absolute evil does not seem to be split along political divisions. It is practised right across the political spectrum and it appears to be more prevalent the further one moves away from a centrist position.

While I haven't run into this problem yet on the iraq issue I certainly have in the past over Israel/Palestine as I have never hesitated to accuse both parties and their supporters of being terrorists (just because you wear a uniform and your actions are sanctioned by your government does not mean you are not a terrorist).

I've noticed something similar. Not so much the zero sum part, but definitely a binary view of the world. You either support something or you don't. A person, a cause, whatever. You give it full and complete (and sometimes unconditional) support. Period.

It's hard to argue with this world view. Logic suggests that nobody is infallible, that nobody is deserving of complete and total support (I can love my kids, absolutely, totally, with everything I've got and still not support some of their actions). But I'm as guilty as the next guy of sometimes being overzealous in my defense of a position, thinking that to give ANY ground, ANY quarter is to be defeated.

I think this tends to happen most with the things about which we are most passionate. Human nature.

And so even a verbal attack against one or more elements of administration policy is met first with a defense that admits no mistakes, allows no fault. Some kind of counter-attack, well-reasoned or not, will follow.

It is certainly true that you find it across the political spectrum. It seems to me to happen more often when the issue has strong emotional elements. Fear and anger at the top of the list.

Norm, since you persist in misrepresenting our discussions, let me clarify something for your readers. You're playing little games again, trying to make me look stupid, not to win your argument. Only an idiot would say that we have no obligation to meet our obligations, you just haven't shown that we haven't.

Who do you think gave the inspectors the names of the over 3,000 scientists they need to interview (of whom they have talked with 3)? Who do you think gave them the lists of sites they've seen already? Giving them "full support" is pretty vague I'd say. It doesn't say "turn over all intelligence, no matter how classified it is, and no matter how you got it or who might be in danger as a result of your turning it over."

The fact remains that if Iraq were cooperating, the support we have given would be "full" enough. We'd like to fly U2 planes, and would be more than happy to divulge everything they see, but Saddam has yet to let us. We've given UNMOVIC bug-detecting technology, and yet they persist in not using it, or in ignoring bugs that they find. We've encouraged them to stand up to minders, and they have not. Do we have to go to Iraq and do their jobs for them too?

You seem to think that the other UNSC members have fully met their obligations too! HA! It is to laugh! No one knows more about what Iraq has than France and Germany! They have so much blood on their hands it's disgusting, but still, you blame Bush. And don't go back to your bogus "two wrongs don't make a right" crap. Is this about the inspections being successful, or is this about you winning your point?

I concede, we have to comply, I just think we have--more than we ought to have obviously because no sooner did Powell disclose the stuff about the missile silo and the trucks than they were moved and inspectors couldn't find them. You seem to think those inspectors are "secure!" Get a grip! The French have a MAJOR interest in the inspectors NOT finding anything. If we gave this group of people our intelligence--all of it--not only would people die, stuff would be hidden so well and so fast, our soldiers wouldn't be able to find it when we finally have to go in there and disarm Saddam by force.

Or have you forgotten who tipped off the Somalis that we were coming?

Be a little honest Norm! Your original assertion was that inspections were not successful because of US! You were not making some stupid technical argument about rules! You were very clearly blaming the failure of the inspectors to disarm Saddam on the US and on BUSH and on the CIA in particular. This is ABSURD, and you are lying about it now to make me look foolish and you look reasonable and smart.

If you want to disagree with someone, that's fine, but stop digressing into these specious arguments about NOTHING. You're like a political Seinfeld.

The main point of the post was that you accused me of giving "Saddam more credit than Bush" and for evidence you presented the fact that I "accused Bush of withholding support" are you retracting that statement are you no longer accusing me of giving Saddam more credit than Bush. If not perhaps you would like to include Senator Carl Levin, who not only thinks that we should do a better job of cooperating but that the CIA director lied about what information on the suspected location of weapons of mass destruction had been passed on. How about it Deb are you sticking by your statement that accusing Bush of withholding support means you give more credit to Saddam? You spent several paragraphs recounting the problems with inspections no one I repeat no one is claiming there are not problems. Be honest you say, your original assertion was that inspections were not successful because of us. Are you kidding me. I have repeatedly acknowledged that there are problems with inspections and that Saddam is responsible for many of them. I certainly think it would be helpful if we increased our cooperation, but I don't think that would guarantee sucess. Did you not read any of what I wrote are you really claiming I said all the US had to do was fully cooperate and that would guarantee success. That is exactly the point of the post the questions are not black and white, but once again you frame it that way, saying I'm arguing that all we need to do to make the inspections successful is cooperate. That is absurd, how in the world did you ever come to that conclusion?

Maybe the arguments appear specious if you don't take the time to read them, concentrate, and actually try and learn how an good argument is put together. Just my two cents.

"No one knows more about what Iraq has than France and Germany!"

And the 24 US companies who aided and abetted him in his quest for WMD. Or did you forget them, Deb?

Key A = nuclear weapon program B = biological weapon program C = chemical weapon program R = rocket program K = conventional weapons, military logistics, supplies at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, and building of military plants

Those companies are: 1. Honeywell (R, K) 2. Spectra Physics (K) 3. Semetex (R) 4. TI Coating (A, K) 5. Unisys (A, K) 6. Sperry Corp. (R, K) 7. Tektronix (R, A) 8. Rockwell (K) 9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (A) 10. Finnigan-MAT-US (A) 11. Hewlett-Packard (A, R, K) 12. Dupont (A) 13. Eastman Kodak (R) 14. American Type Culture Collection (B) 15. Alcolac International (C) 16. Consarc (A) 17. Carl Zeiss - U.S (K) 18. Cerberus (LTD) (A) 19. Electronic Associates (R) 20. International Computer Systems (A, R, K) 21. Bechtel (K) 22. EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (R) 23. Canberra Industries Inc. (A) 24. Axel Electronics Inc. (A)

Certainly they know pertinent details. Reports are that we've not been forthcoming as much as we could be. Why is that?

Yes Scott, all true, those companies did sell things to Iraq, and if you want to divest from these companies (as I have--I own no stock in any of them for this reason), be my guest, but there is a difference between a NATION having billions of dollars worth of lucrative oil contracts (all illegal mind you) and publicly held companies selling things to Iraq, most likely with international offices assisting.

I'm not saying two wrongs make a right here, they don't, but conceding to your point does not invalidate Powell's evidence, nor does it change the wording of1441! This has been my point from the beginning of my discussions with Norm.

I've asked him questions that would allow him to presuppose that I don't think everything we have done in the past is "good." I've never even maintained that the US is blameless, but I have said that we are the ones now pushing to go in there and, in effect, fix some of the problems that we may have contributed to. I would find it much more suspicious, for example, if we were pushing NOT to use force to disarm Saddam than the other way around! To me, that would be the greater of the two evils.

I have asked Norm to explain how more inspectors would do a "better" job of disarming Saddam. I have also asked how even "more cooperation" vis a vis intelligence information would enable them to disarm him completely when he is so committed to thwarting their efforts. Or do you believe he is NOT committed to hiding what he has? If that's true, then why not let the U2s fly without conditions? He's had three months to comply with that, and he hasn't, why? He's had three months to comply with private out-of-country interviews, and he hasn't--so far, three people, one of whom is circumspect--have been interviewed, that's it.

My point is, what if we're BOTH right? What if it's not as simple as US=GOOD, Saddam=BAD, but rather US=mostly good, Saddam=BAD? Why do we have to be blameless, perfect, above reproach to win the argument that only force will effectively disarm this monster?

You see, all of you make the mistake that I am "pro-war" or that I am "pro-Bush" out-of-hand. This is not the case. I have many problems with the Bush Administration, but this isn't one of them. I think it takes guts, frankly, to face the criticism and take the heat, from all over the world, not just from you folks, when certainly accepting "containment" or "more inspectors" would certainly be much much easier. I think committing troops is HARD, not easy, and I don't think this man is an evil murderous thug, I think Saddam IS.

Whatever one's reason--ending Saddam's tyranny, gaining freeer access to Iraqi oil (access, that would benefit Iraqis more than it would benefit us), disarming Saddam of WMD's, removal of Kim Jong Il's likely best customer, removal of Hamas's generous benefactor, punishment for gassing the Kurds, etc...--it has to be better to get rid of this guy than to leave him where he is.

Ask yourself this: Why did we NOT go back in militarily when Saddam did not meet his obligationf 40 days after the cease-fire in Gulf I? Why??? Because the UN had lost interest and the will to fight! They sent in inspectors instead. And in the next five years, those inspectors were unable to uncover what one defector helped them located in a single day! Whose fault is that? The CIA's? The inspectors? Or Saddam's?

Do you think for one minute that the UN is less likely to get distracted and move on than they were immediately following a war that wasn't finished? I submit to you that backing down from "serious consequences" being equivalent to "force" is tantamount to giving Saddam the keys to the kingdom. The UN will lose all authority, the US will be a laughing stock in the terrorist mindset, and N. Korea will be more, not less likely to proliferate nuclear weapons right under our noses. Why not? What are we going to do to stop them? By the logic on this site, we won't have a right to do anything until they actually USE one of the nukes to kill millions of people!

You all say I'm the absolutist, but in fact you are. You see peace as the absence of war, nothing more. I see it as much, much more than that.

If you all want to keep coming back to the tried-and-true "Well this is also bad" arguments, be my guest, but you're STILL not answering the questions I've asked! What if everything you try that ISN'T force fails, what if we do 12 more years of inspections and Saddam, like Kim Jong Il (who, in case you forgot, managed it right under the noses of Atomic Energy inspectors) announces that he's got nukes and plans to use them if we cross him? What then? Do we blame the CIA? Do we blame the US? How constructive will that be then? So fucking what? He'll still have the weapons won't he? "Blame" doesn't work as a practical matter. If you want to talk turkey, and provide deadlines--how much you will tolerate, I'm all ears, but you're not. You're all just opposing force until he kills more people, invades another country or can CONCLUSIVELY be tied to a terrorists attack that happens HERE, and not in Israel (where he can easily be tied to several). That means, you want more people to die before we go after this guy.

And I'm the absolutist?

Yeah, WHAT-ever.

Without getting into the rights and wrongs of this debate, or US policy, or whatever, I would only suggest that we proceed with caution before we begin attacking nations simply because they possess nuclear weapons and announce their willingness to use them. That's what deterrence is all about.

As much as I understand your point, Deb, that it would be horrific to wait until he actually does kill more people, it is a dangerous precedent to set for our nation, the invasion of another country -- an invasion many other nations are opposed to -- not so much because of what they've done (we all know about those atrocities) but about what they MIGHT do.

I am not opposed to war. Does anybody seriously believe that this thing in Iraq will be a "war?" That the Iraqi army will be any more of a match for ours than they were in 1991, when they lasted, what 100 hours? Ours is clearly the superior force, and will clearly emerge victorious. There is no question of the outcome. Which is what I'm opposed to: the transparent use of force by our government to secure a vital section of real estate halfway across the world.

If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and read the September 2000 report on Rebuilding America's Defenses (http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm), and realize that opposition to the throttling we're about to give Iraq isn't rooted in a knee-jerk defense of Hussein, but in a desire not to be a part of a planned New American Imperialism.

It's a slippery slope, the starting of wars. It's a dangerous pattern, calling your allies names, suggesting that maybe we don't need no stinking allies anymore. Opposition to this action is much, much bigger than a second-rate dictator like Hussein.

My two cents, anyway.

I happen to think that George and Saddam are varying degrees of Evil. I happen to think the entire Bush Family is Evil, having enabled Saddam in the first place, something they refuse to acknowledge. Yes, France, Germany and others enabled him as well, but I'm not concerned about that. I'm concerned about what the Bushes have done to this country, starting with the first Evil Regime Enabler, Prescott Bush. I don't have to be anti-war to be anti-Bush BTW. I think both Evil dictators should be dealt with. I think Bush Sr should be in a federal prison, not making money off the War Machine. And I won't forget what Clinton did and didn't do either.

RKB, I don't disagree that acting "with" allies rather than alone is always preferable, but why aren't you counting the 34 nations that ARE with us? By my count, there are 16 NATO countries with us, and three opposed (one of whom is NOT, and has not been since 1966 a member of NATO, but for some odd reason, still holds sway in that organization).

I do not agree that we have taken a "we don't need no stinkin' allies" approach at all! If that were the case, we would not have gone to the UN in September, we would not have worked so hard to draft a resolution that could be approved UNANIMOUSLY, and we would not have put up with inspections for so long that were proven to be futile not only before they started, but by December 7th when Iraq made clear their intent to obfuscate by turning in 12,000 plus pages of dreck!

I think we have tried and tried to be diplomatic, whereas France has insulted and mocked us publicly at every turn, debasing the memories of the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who died to free them, and somehow we still worry incessantly what they think! I worry about what they think, but only to the extent that they think they can drive a wedge between us and our REAL friends, and honestly, I think Germany out-from-under Schroeder would be one of those.

Frankly, at this point, I don't think it's "we don't need no stinkin' allies" it's "we don't need no stinkin' enemies masquerading as allies" especially ones who really ARE stinky, as the French typically are :-)

As for "pre-emptive" strikes, I think only mindless twits would think that pre-emptively using force in Iraq in what could easily be called an "enforcement action," is tantamount to unprovoked invasion for the purposes of colonization! Any European nation, or even Arab nation that thinks we are just beginning some campaign of ever-widening aggression to remake the world in our image is indulging in macabre fantasy! Remember, GWB is not calling shots irrespective of what people like Powell and Rice have to say. I trust these people. I believe they know, and I believe even Bush knows, that we cannot create "America" in Arabia! What we can do is use force to protect freer forms of government, probably something more closely resembling Turkey than the US, and if we can, then we should. Iraq requires force to start the ball rolling, and probably to even put the ball on the track. Iran probably just needs the threat of force to ignite what is already a smoldering fire of freedom. Saudi Arabia can look at these countries someday, hopefully soon, and see the writing on the wall for themselves--not of our troops moving in, but rather of them moving OUT and into a free Iraq--and then perhaps they too will consider reforming and cleaning up their own House of Saud to save their kingdom. We needn't "go to war" with all of these nations to necessarily bring about change, we just need to demonstrate that tyranny and terrorism will NOT go unchecked by the free world.

If military action against tyrannical murderers is unwarranted, even given all the death and destruction that men such as Saddam have wrought over the years, just because 'we" haven't been personally attacked, all I can say is, perhaps Norm is right and we really DON'T deserve to take the moral high ground after all.

I for one am not a racist or an ethnocentrist. I don't need to see Americans die in America before I feel action is warranted. If it were up to me, we'd be in Rwanda too, and perhaps someday we will be, but for now, we are going after the low-hanging fruit in the hope that we can change over thirty years of passive and proxy-war foreign policy into more active, positive and responsible action to safeguard the values we hold most dear.

Let's look a moment at the 34 nations with us. The Vilnius 10, for example.

Their combined military budgets? $3 billion.

Do you know the annual budge of the NYPD?

$3.5 billion.

The colonial dreams of the Bush Administration are all laid out in various documents, Deb, including the PNAC papers listed above, and the so-called Bush Doctrine.

If they believe that they cannot create America in Arabia, why do you have key people in the Administration actively talking about using Iraq as our base to spread democracy? The neo-Domino Theory I'm calling it, where the Arab nations will suddenly be overwhelmed with a desire to become democratic.

This is espoused by Perle and Wolfowitz, to name but two key people who are guiding us down the path to ruin.

I =don't= trust this Administration to do what is right for the future of the nation, not when Bush lies in the SOTU!

Which lie? That he will not leave problems for the next President, or future generations.

$5.6 trillion debt sounds like a problem to me.

A world that has distanced itself politically from us sounds like a problem to me.

A world that no longer trusts us, due to our backing out of more treaties than I can remember.

This is what folks get irate about. This is what makes this Administration the worst this country has ever seen.

Well there are other things too Scott. Like the only actual evidence that Iraq has WoMD (and I think they do as it fits in with Saddam's character) is from an accounting discrepency in Iraq's original declaration after Desert Storm I. That's it and that is according to the inspectors. Then there's the ongoing claims that Hussein gassed his own people (the 1988 gassing of Halabja) which it now turns out it was the Iranians that did the killing (see http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/31PELL.html?pagewanted=1)

This administration has carried out a campaign of complete deception with regards to Iraq. Bush was planning his ionvasion before he even took the oath of office as he made clear during his initial briefing by the pentagon as president-elect (yeah right).

The US strongarmed the security council intop resolution 1441. THat resolution is a farce. It demands that Iraq prove a negative essentially. Prove you do not have WoMD. If, and I fully admit it is a big if, the accounting discrepencies in their original report after GWI were bureaucratic errors - that is the army and air force not communicating with each other properly (gee no surprise there) - then it is entirely possible that there really are few or no WoMD left in Iraq and the inspectors did find them all last time. If that were the case then there is no way Iraq could prove it. Unlikely I know, but more than a mere statistical possibility. If they had those weapons then at least one of the much vaunted intelligence agencies of Britain, France, Germany and the US to name but a few would have solid eveidence that they could turn over to the inspectors. The excuse that it would compromise future intelligence gathering is a ruse. Telling inspectors go to these lat/long co-ordinates and you will find this - does not reveal the source of that information. The failure of all these governments to come forward with a single piece of credible evidence, conmbined with reports by defectors stating that various arms programs were abandoned after GWI, suggests the weapons may not exist, in any significant quantity, any longer. I have no doubt though that if Iraq is invaded those weapons will suddenly and easily be found, one way or another - it would be just too embarrassing for the US if they weren't.

History proves over and over again that the governments in general and certainly the US administration can not be blindly trusted to "know what's best" or 'tell the truth". We only have to recall the deliberate lie that Lyndon Johnson told that cost some 58K US armed forces personnel their lives in Vietnam. People who blindly believe their governments are fools.

Yesterday an estimated 2 million people marched against the war in London Enggland - if those numbers prove out correctly that is rouhly 1/30 of the population of Great Britain - Blair's government is in serious, serious trouble and it would not be surprising in the least to see him back down and pull out of this "coalition".

I laugh when I hear pro-war people slam France and Germany for not supporting the US - all this talk of supposed allies stabbing the US in the back , ingratitude for the past. What a load of hooey. Russia and France have billions of dollars invested in Iraqi oil fields. Germany has huge contracts with France and Russia to supply technology and workers for those oil contracts. Late last year US oil companies , with the full support and blessing of the US government, met with the Iraqi opposition in London to divide up Iraq's oil assets in a post Saddam Iraq. France, Russia and Germany were left out of that divvying up - all the oil is going to American and British oil companies. Now tell nme why France, Germany and Russia should support the US.

The Bush administration is the most corrupt and dangerous administration to ever hold the reigns of power in Washington and it is time for the american people to wake up - because with the assaults taking place on their freedoms and their constitution hey sure as hell don't have a lot of time left to go on dreaming.

Once Iraq is attacked al-Qaeda, or some other terrorist group, will launch more attacks in the US. It is only a question of when not if. When that happens watch for new legislation from Ashcroft that will make the US PATRIOT act and PATRIOT II look like a walk in the park and the public will roll over and beg for their freedoms to be taken away in order to secure their protection. It happens every time and the administration is counting on it. They know, beyond any shadow of a doubt they know, that any attack by the US on Iraq will cause far more terrorist attacks on US civilians and property continuing far into the future, than not attacking Iraq would cause. One MUST question their motivations, to do less would be an abandonment of your civic responsibility.

Can't find a thing to argue with, DD.

I've been thinking about this myself.

The country has degenerated into Us Vs Them thinking and this has been going on for a long time now...

One is either a 'liberal' or a 'conservative'...Democrat or Republican...and every argument comes from the need to be loyal to and defend their group...

The search for truth and independent thinking goes out the window when one is so busy spinning for their side and trying to destroy the others....hell, it's so common now, people don't even realize they do it.

This kind of thinking is why we're in the mess we're in...

However, 6 million people around the world for peace are not afflicted by this particular type of American disease...

And of course...devout Republicans have an answer to that...just push button #3...and the pat answer will come right out in the propaganda wars where all is phoney.

They will not hear your response--because after all, you're the enemy. The Fox News Network, the major talk show party-line mouthpieces daily try to discredit (and have succeeded at) dissenting thought with name calling...

They should be very happy. They have won the propaganda game. And no one can stop them.

Blind trust to any political party in power is not only a threat to democracy, but, in the case, of those hell-bent for 'retribution' and 'expansion,' in which WMDs drop like so much empty rhetoric, but also a definite threat to the world.

THat's right Ray - it's like the myth of the Liberal Media - something that doesn't exist, at least in broadcast media. The media is overwhelmingly conservative but conservatives have played a very savvy PR game for about the last 5 decades to taint the word liberal. It was easy to do during the cold war - eqauting anything liberal with the commies - it stuck in the public's consciousness and made the careers of people like Limbaugh. It has had the effect of stifling free speech on the airwaves by making any commentator with liberal views hesitant to speak out for fear of being marginalized by that term. Liberal conmmentators have bent over backwards to include opposing conservative views on their programs which explains why total morons like Falwell and Robertson get so much airtime as political commentators.

Deb can't seem to get past the insults. One is a traitor, or unpatriotic, or we should ignore the French because they are typically stinky. What a great reason for ignoring them. Deb has not been satisfied with what I would do, she states that I have not presented more specific ideas than enhanced inspections. So here are a couple of approaches that I would prefer to the right-wing George Bush-Deb plan.

First this from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace or even this from a Libertarian Julian Sanchez.