In the UK, many are drawing parallels with Suez in 1956, when a personally obsessed Tory prime minister (who had to take a recuperative holiday mid-crisis and was subsequently eased out of office on medical grounds) got the UK into a monumental folly against Nasser's Egypt, in deceitful collusion with France and Israel.

On that occasion it was the constraining voice of Ike who put a stop to the nonsense and forced an ignominious withdrawal of British troops. There are still constraining voices in the States, but alas they are outnumbered by the mindless kick-ass brigade so ably represented by this Bush administration.

Jed, Saddam is one of the worst. But is he really that much worse than the despotic, feudal ruling family that the US leapt to defend with Desert Storm? Or the military dictator in Pakistan, that the US has so suddenly befriended? Or many others that the US has actively supported (Mobutu, Pinochet, etc)?

So Saddam's record is hardly the point. The point should be that he's no threat to America, in any meaningful way.

He has no ballistic missiles, and has no prospect within his lifetime of building missiles that could reach the States. He has no chemical weapons, and if he has biological weapons they are almost certainly degraded by now. (His chemical/biological weapons - which never amounted to WMDs, by the way - were built up in the 80s with support from the UK and US, when Saddam was Iran's enemy, and therefore the west's friend.) He has no chance of developing such weapons on his own without it being detected by western intelligence agencies.

Furthermore there is not a shred of evidence that Saddam had the slightest thing to do with 9/11. Nor would it be likely that he had any involvement. In fact he has no truck with muslim fundamentalism and has made it a capital offence to proseletyse the islamic faith.

Everything I've said here is now being argued by the last head of the UN weapons inspectorate in Iraq, Scott Ritter. It is now fashionable in Washington circles to deride this guy. But hey - what's going on in the states?!! This guy is an ex-marine! A war vet! a former CIA agent! Apart from which, he was given the runaround by Saddam a few times. Why is he saying all this, and not what lynchmob America wants tho hear, which is surely where the money is?

So come on Jed - what's the case, beyond facile rhetoric, for war with Iraq?