You may well be right, Teribus, about what would have happened with Hussein had Bush not invaded. But you may not be, and I don't know any way to reduce such hypotheticals to practical vlaue.

I do know this. No military strategist who knows anything fails to recognize that civilians get killed in ground wars. They get killed in urban wars, especially. And above all, they get killed in wars where high-density population areas (cities) are bombed, as was the case with Baghdad) using either dumb munitions or missiles. No matter how smart we claim our weapons are, and no matter how much we use clever words like "precision" and "surgical" (!!!) the fact is that innocents get killed.

Knowing this, as anyone aware of military history must, the decision to send in troops, missiles, heavy artillery, howitzers, "shock and awe" bomb campaigns, and more must include the fact that non-combatant blood will be spilled. It is not a surprise side-effect. It is a predictable consequence of unleashing that much force in highly populated areas.

His anxiety to attack Saddam Hussein personally was so high that Bush was willing to commit murder in order to do it.

I find this unforgiveable in a human being, symptomatic of the most degraded and craven personal condition.

He could have taken out the entire Hussein family by hiring renegade Iraqis, for a fraction of the cost. He could have done a dozen things that would have been effective.

But he made his choice to spill blood. And he did not much care whether the blood he spilled was friend or enemy -- he just went ahead and pulled the lever and let loose the bloodthirsty, gut-tearing dogs of ravenous war. Out of spurious "necessity".

I spit.

A