by James Glaser
February 27, 2003

There is little doubt that Saddam Hussein is a thug and killer. However the man is not dumb, ruthless yes, but a man that has held power for decades in a dangerous part of this world. For over thirty years Saddam has kept all opposition at bay. It is known that in Iraq if you take on Saddam, you won't be around long.

It is also known that under Saddam, Iraq was the by far the most progressive Muslim country in the world. Iraq had great education for all of its people, women could study and become whatever they wanted, and the countries standard of living was tops for any Arab country. The last Gulf War has destroyed Iraq, both physically and economically. America has done everything it can to stop Iraq and the Iraqi people from making any sort of recovery from that war.

This is the sad truth, the United States of America feels no qualms about hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead and dying due to our sanctions on that country. Oh those in Washington will point a finger at Saddam and say if he would just disarm we would lift those sanctions. The fact is, children are still dying today and it doesn't matter who is at fault. What does matter is the that those children are dead, more die each and every day, and their blood is on our hands just as much as it is on Saddams.

America is the greatest power in the world, but we have a real flaw. If some leader in this world stands up to us, we are not able to deal with that. We will make an example out of not only that leader, but also his people. Look at France today. Because French President Jacques Chirac dares to disagree with us on Iraq, there are now moves to boycott French wine, water, and food. Does this hurt Chirac or the French Farmer? 85% of the French people are against this war and France is a Democracy. If Chirac was working to start this war he would be going against the wishes of his own people.

The same can be said for Germany. 80 some percent of the German citizens are against this war and Washington trashes their country for this, even though France and Germany have been some of our strongest allies for the last forty years. Both of these countries were among the first to offer aid on the War on Terrorism after 9/11. Now, along with many other countries, they do not see a war with Iraq as part of that War.

Sure there are countries like Great Britain and Turkey that have populations solidly against this war, whose governments still side with America, but those are countries that can be bought and for me personally that is distasteful. In the long run those two countries can not be trusted because they are not Democracies. Their people have no say in what their government is doing and money below the table works on their leaders. Germany and France might disagree with us on this issue, but they are honest enough to be upfront about it and tells us. I personally like friends like that.

Now America wants to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and to me that is a good thing, but at what cost? Will we feel like it was a victory if we kill Saddam, but we had to kill a hundred and fifty thousand innocent Iraqis to get to him? How about a hundred thousand or maybe just fifty thousand innocent Iraqis, will we then still have a victory?

How many little children can America kill in this war and feel good about it because we got rid of Saddam? What price are we willing to have the Iraqi people spend, because it is the Iraqi people that are going to die so that George Bush and the International Corporations can once again own Iraq?

We did own Iraq for many years while Saddam was first in power. We called the shots and he pulled the trigger. That is a fact Jack and we also gave him the trigger to pull. We gave him the Gas to attack his own people with. Just what do you think Washington thought Saddam was going to do with the Chemical and Biological weapons we gave him? Now we act surprised that he used them. America is just as culpable as Saddam is for gas attacks on Iran and the Kurds. We gave him the weapon, while at the same time we were urging him on to victory over Iran a country three times the population of Iraq.

Even after Saddam use the weapons of mass destruction we provided, we still tried to cover for him. Our own Pentagon reported that it was Iran that gassed those Kurds and it was only after Saddam stopped being our boy, did we change the story. After that gas attack the likes of our own Donald Rumsfled were smiling and shaking Saddam's hand, because we still had use for this killer.

You see in America's eyes killers are OK, as long as they kill who we want them to. It is just when they strike out on their own and think they can call their own shots, do we turn on them.