I notice at the end of the article, Mr. Kristof has to make the obligatory and pointless swipe at Mr. Bush. After all, he does work for the New York Times. He compares the ayatollahs' fascistic imposition of strict Islam on Iran to George Bush doing ... what?

You don't have much faith in those ideals, either, Orrin, as you insist on helping them with armed invasion. In fact, I'd say your faith is even weaker than the pundits you deride.

Derek:

Note that I don't think we need to invade Iran--it's ripe fruit. Saddam had to go because he was ignoring the '91 ceasefire and making us look foolish as well as oppressing the Shi'a and Kurds. I'd do Assad just for the fun of it, but his days are numbered too.

Oh, the latest batch of trite excuse.

He made us a look like a fool? I don't see that. Clinton made himself look like a fool and Hussein gave in to all of W's prewar demands. Buth, hey, we look really good right now, don't we?

Hussein was contained, and the violations you're mentioning are minor, not enough to warrant killing anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 civilians and over 1,000 coalition soldiers.

As for the Shia' and Kurds, the Kurds had their autonomy, and the Shia were far less oppressed than a score of other groups around the globe.

Derek:

UN Resolutions called for him to reform the state such that he'd have had to leave power.

Strange how no one interpreted those resolutions quite the way you are.

If "no one" includes France and the UN, all I can say is that your under-the-table cut of Iraqi oil money can do quite a bit to your "interpretation".

Derek:

Except the one guy who mattered:

" In 1991, Security Council Resolution 688 demanded that the Iraqi regime cease at once the repression of its own people, including the systematic repression of minorities -- which the Council said, threatened international peace and security in the region. This demand goes ignored. "

Back to the original posting, it appears the Mullahs have forced their own rigid version of Islam onto the populace to the point they now have a "Take Your God And Shove It" reaction.

I went through something similar in the mid-Seventies, after getting involved with an aberrant (and extremely overcontrolling) splinter church for a couple years.

(Such "aberrant Christian groups" were not recognized until some years later; basically, they are small independent splinter churches whose theology is sound (usually some form of very conservative Evangelical or Pentecostal) but operate in a very overcontrolling and destructive "cult" manner towards their members. They used to get under the radar of Christian "cult-watch" groups because these cult-watchers defined "cult" according to aberrant theology, NOT control-freak destructive behavior.)

When you get abused and mistreated in the Name of God, why would you want to follow that God? What idea would you have of God except The Cosmic Abuser?

Saddam was TEMPORARILY and PARTIALLY contained; The food-for-oil UN scandal shows how likely he was to have remained bottled up.

Hussein agreed to UN Weapons Inspections because the US had 100,000 troops stationed at his border, at a cost to America of $ 10 billion a year.
How likely is it that Americans would have agreed to continue funding such a deployment, even if Kuwait had agreed to allow the troops to stay long term, which is extremely unlikely ?

Even if we assume that 15,000 Iraqi civilians have died, it's still HALF as many as were dying EVERY YEAR under UN sanctions.

Thus, it's clear that Saddam COULD NOT have been contained, absent war, and that the civilian population is BETTER OFF with a US invasion and occupation than they were under Saddam and UN sanctions.

And there's one less "House Harkonnen" running a country.

(Think about it. In the Husayn-al-Tikriti you had a Beast Rabban (Uday), a Feyd-Rautha (Qusay), and over them both, the floating fat man himself (Baba Saddam). Even some of the names have similarities: Iraq/Arrakis? Saddam/Emperor Shaddam IV?)