It's simple. You either believe Saddam is a major threat to the USA or you don't. I don't.

I think it's exactly the other way around, and I think Saddam is just a handy excuse for something the USA would be wanting to do in the Middle East, regardless of whether Saddam Hussein even existed or not.

He's just the latest Manuel Noriega, Muammar Quaddafi, Osama Bin-Laden figure, and America is using him as a symbol to manipulate the American public into supporting an aggressive policy in the Middle East. They used Osama to take Afghanistan, and they intend to use Saddam to take Iraq. America NEEDS Saddam. The worst thing he could do to Bush is announce his retirement, and go live in Singapore or China, or some such place. Then Bush would have to find a brand-new bogeyman to obsess about, and that would take a little time and trouble. It would be a whole new media hard sell campaign to get in gear.

America needs a "bad guy" to save the world from. Always. It has ever been so. If they can't find a real one, they just invent one. Then they smash up a country, kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, and DON'T generally get the "bad guy", but it doesn't matter...cos they DO get what they're really after...which is NOT him, but his country and all its resources. The "bad guy" is more often than not a former employee of America.

- LH