GuestTIA —

I never said this was really about human rights; what I said was that maybe a lot of people would see the 60 Minutes segment as a tribute, not a damnation of Bush and his policy.

I might also note that during that same 60 Minutes broadcast they interviewed a Shiia leader (who has turned against the U.S. because they didn't do enough to help his people during and after Saddam) who talked of the mass killings. They also showed some of the recently-uncovered mass graves. Did the human rights advocates not see what Saddam did to the Kurds? Have you forgotten the stories from the late '80s and early '90s of Saddam's troops stacking Iranian soldiers' bodies in the swamps so they could drive their trucks and tanks in?

As for pictures, I'll bet that even if they'd asked, U.S. photographers and/or journalists wouldn't have had access to Saddam's killing fields to document it. But there is certainly evidence of it now that U.S. troops are on the ground there.

Or don't you read those reports?

As for the WMD debacle.... Maybe, just maybe, if Bush hadn't spent time asking for support from the rest of the world and had gone in quickly, they might have found some, instead of giving the Iraqis all kinds of time to hide or destroy them. That they were there at some point can't seriously be questioned, can it, since we know that the technology was sold to Saddam by Bush Sr. when the U.S. was at odds with Iran and Saddam was on "our side."

The Al-Quaeda thing "didn't pan out"? Are you saying the organization isn't a threat? Or just that they haven't found as many of them as Bush would have liked? That tends to happen with shadowy organizations.

Invade other countries for human rights violation? No. Frankly, I think everybody should pull out of the region and let them stew in their own juice of thousands of years of tribal hatreds and political slaughters. If anybody is going to be there to "help," it should be based purely on self-interest — i.e., get what you need and leave them to it. Would that satisfy your sense of moral indignation?

I agree "human rights" is a pretty lame excuse for all this, but whatever the reasons for being there, U.S. troops are there and are dying. I think they have the "human right" to be remembered as individuals who sacrificed all, rather than dismissed as the flails you and your kind use to flog your political opponents.

cheers,

david