Neither Bobert or the many who feel as he does were the correct sources to "say" anything to Saddam. In essence, you are advocating the curtailment of free and open communication of opinions of any ideas not held to be poltiically correct. The person who was responsible for putting the pressure on Saddam from the United States was President Bush. He gave up on using the U.N. to do its proper job. He chose how he was going to do it--Butch Cassidy style, yahoo... The notion that protest by citizens against the vilest undertaking known to man -- mass slaughter -- forced him into it in some obscure indirect way is absolutely specious and erroneous.

Saddam was a psychotic, dealing with a population that is rich in psychosis, individual and cultural, as well as great promise and hope.

Unfortunately, Bush proved himself no better. All he had was a hammer, because he and his colleagues had a severe lack of imagination, a severe lack of human decency, a severe lack of understanding of human affairs, and a severe case of individual and collective greed. So he used his stupid hammer. He's still hammering--or at least, getting others to do so at insane cost. Billions and billions of dollars and man-years of pain and loss and grit and hatred have turned on his single, short-sighted decision to use it. Unfortunately it is turning out that the problem was not a nail. So sad. So stupid.

A