[a_Guest03]

Actually, it does make a difference when you take him out. It's a fixed cost vs. a variable cost. If we take him out now, we kill X amount of children. If we don't take him out now, he kills (yearly) X amount of children.

Saddam probably has 10+ years of rule, and 2 able-bodied children to rule after him. His progeny could rule until SOMEONE overthrew him for being ruthless and murderous. So you now have stopped ~70 years of his family's murderous rule, assuming that no organization would have stopped him aside from the U.S.

Do the math! Saddam would kill more in his tenure than this war could possibly kill without using WMD, and his children would topple the figure by a large amount.

50X is much bigger than X. Also assume that those people have feelings, and love and hate as well. In their death and desperation, do they not want the U.S. to save them? If not, that's just suicide, and pathetic (in a sad way, not in a mean way). I think the condemned among Saddam's enemies would love anyone to defy him. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Why are the Iraqi's helping us to capture the old rulers if they love their government so much? It's because they don't trust Saddam almost as much as they don't trust us. That means a lot, because of something I know to be true. You feel safer with the demons you know than with the angels you don't. Battered women won't leave their husbands. Abused children won't tattle on their parents. If the Iraqi's are turning on Saddam, they DO NOT want him there. The American's wouldn't turn in Bush to a foreign commander unless they HATED him. The British wouldn't turn in Tony Blair.

We DO kill people, but the arabs are killing their own people as well! Who will stop them? Apparently it's the U.S. and their allies. Dani, I know that you don't agree with us fighting them for oil. You don't agree with us fighting them for freedom, because of the oil incentives. You don't think the U.S. is trustworthy enough or altruistic enough to take the country and give it back, or you believe that we just aren't WORTHY enough, because we are filthy Americans. It's happened before, quite a few times. It only backfired a few times, like with Germany in between WWI and WWII.

I wish the world would stop hating us. We aren't bullies, and we aren't ruthless. The movies want to portray the US government as some untrustworthy secret society, but I don't think that's true. The US makes a lot of mistakes, but there are a lot of people to care for, and that takes a lot of work. On top of that, there's fighting between parties that stops much progress. It seems stupid, but it keeps guys like Saddam out.

One day, the fate of the US in the eyes of the world will fall on another nation, and they will be the disdain of the remainder of mankind. We are just and honest as a society, and our people are wiser than we know what to do with. We just haven't adapted yet to a purely integrated global population with global ideas. When it is all there, we'll do a lot better.