No government leader like "single bullet solutions" involving their opposite numbers. There's a sort of informal agreement to leave each other alone. The equivalent of the old MAD nuclear stand-off, but on an individual level.

.................

I took it that kendall's comment about Saddam's massacres was not really about Saddam as about the way that the practice of misinformation carried out by our governments makes people sceptical, even when what they say is true. (The figure of speech involved is, think, technically called "aporia".)

That interpretation is strengthened by the fact kendall closed with the reference to the boy who cried "Wolf" too often - the point was, in the story, there really was a wolf, amd the wolf did indeed come, but the boy had taught other people to disregard what he said as a lie.