more for the purposes of recording my opinion for future re-reading than to add my voice to the current m�l�e, here's my 2 cents on the war that started last night.

once we got to the point of having hundreds of thousands of troops and associated heavy equipment on the iraq border, i suspect that it would've been really really bad for future credibility to back down. however. i don't think we should have been anywhere near that point to begin with.

saddam is nasty. he's a paranoid, cruel, desperate, dictator. he models himself on stalin, one of the most dangerously unstable and brutal leaders ever. he surely does have weapons. he certainly has no qualms about using them. the world would be a better place if he were not in power.

but.

now is NOT. THE. TIME. now, we have other things to worry about. there's osama and al-quaida, who need to be ass-whooped. there's israel and palistine, who need to start behaving, and clearly won't figure out how unless we (or someone--i'm looking at you jimmy carter) helps them out. there's north korea, the whiney neglected baby of the world, that needs some attention before it decides to nuke something to get it. and that's just on the foreign front. at home, we've got the usual assortment of poor children, endangered wildlife, underpaid teachers, and slumping stock prices to worry about. we were doing just fine by ignoring saddam (more or less) for a dozen years. i think he could have waited. and we could have had more time to let the inspectors do their work.

wrt the inspectors. i wonder if they're going about this the best way. first, i think it's imperative that they take scientists and their families out of iraq, *then* interview the scientists. find out where all the bad stuff really is. second, perhaps the inspectors should be backed up with a smallish military force. not to start anything, but to ensure that the inspectors get access where and when they want.

i think bush is just doing this to avenge his father's honor. oh, and the oil. oh, and to distract the nation from his dangerous and short-sighted domestic agenda. he has been a failure most of his life, but has an ego that needs stroking. now that he's got the big guns, he's created this "need" to use them, just to show off. he's recklessly ignoring the probable reaction to this war from the terrorist nations of the middle east: a radically de-stabilized middle east and serious terrorist attacks against the US and allies. i agree with many who have said that it is george bush, not saddam, who is the greatest threat to world peace.

however, i also think that france and it's cronies are just as stupidly wrong. yes, we should be striving for peace. but it's just as short-sighted to refuse to authorize military force for any reason at all as it is to rush headlong into war without world support. france's threat of veto of any UN resolution clearly did nothing to prevent war. it only guaranteed that the UN has no input into this war.

to sum up: most of the world leaders currently in the news are self-centered pricks. particularly: bush, saddam, chirac. we never should have gotten to this point with iraq. at least not now, not without cause, not without world support. but, now that we're there, we're fucked either way. if we gave up and went home, fundamentalist muslims and egomaniacal dictators across the middle east would declare that the US is a toothless tiger and probably start bombing shit. by staying and fighting, we will probably rid iraq of saddam. but in the process we will piss off all the fundamentalist muslims and egomaniacal dictators of the middle east, and they will declare the US the scourge of the world and probably start bombing shit.