How much time did you spend worying about the poor oppressed Iraqi people in say...1997, or maybe 1999?

I suspect that in the case of Gareth the answer to that question might be "quite a lot".

It's not as simple as some people seem to think. There are people on both sides in this question who care a lot about human rights, and people who couldn't give a toss. (I mean "on both sides" in the big world, rather than the Mudcat, where I think there's generally a shared concern for human rughts, even when we might disagree about what thta implies when it comes to policies.)