whether or not you believe the coup that brought the Baath Party may had good intentions, (sure maybe the Nazis had good intentions too) is beside the point - 2million Iraqis died under Husseins rule.
the choice for war in this case was a choice of two evils, continuing sanctions (which resulted indirectly in many deaths from lack of medicine, clean water etc. not to mention the continuing torture and executions that Iraqis had to live under - all the while Saddam illegally exported 6billion a year and built palaces and bought weapons (oddly enough mostly from France, Germany, Russia China).

to discontinue the sanctions would just give him more money to buy weapons with no guarantee the people would be better off, because the oil for food program actually gave Saddam more control over people, as they could simply lose their ration cards as punishment.

sure maybe you could continue inspections but with country the size of France you can hide a lot from a few hundred inspectors. If they had nothing to hide why not allow those free interviews with the scientists.

your comments about the people of Russia being better off under communism only indicate a lack of understanding of what it is like to
live under such a system. I have lived under it and everyone else I know who has would gladly take a bit of economic instability for a police state - where people cannot sing a song because it might be dangerous.

- and while were talking about balanced perspective, while we all agree the Palestinians deserve a homeland and are oppressed by the Israelis - (how much media coverage is given to the Kurds and their struggle? - Consider that there are 11million Palestinians, and something like 2300 have died since the start of the intifada,
while (not to belittle their deaths) there are 25 million Kurds and something like 200,000 have died under Hussein, and yet which issue is constantly in the press?