None of this is about our freedom, or even our safety. Hussein is a bad one, and the world will be better off when he is gone. But spouting BS about this being about our freedom just shows you've been reading the propaganda and not researching the facts. Hussein can't threaten our freedom. He can't possibly militarily threaten us. We can and will crush him like a bug. There is simply no scenario where he would invade the US or any of our territories. So it is simply absurd to talk about this being about our freedom. Freedom is about somebody limiting your actions - he can't do that.

What he can possibly do is threaten our safety, or more realisticly, the safety and freedom of countries in the middle east. However, until we started all this escalation, it made no sense for him to do so. Maybe he's got anthrax, mustard gas, or heaven forbid, an A-bomb. If he were to use them, he knows we would render the Euphrates Valley into a molten glass plain. Thats why we keep our own Weapons of Mass Destruction, of which we have more than any other country in the world.

In the last gulf war, Hussein had the poison gas. We told Iraq that it would be a VERY BAD THING if they used gas on our boys, and they understood that. Under any normal circumstances, our arsenal would keep us safe, regardless of what he has in the back room.

But we seem loathe to leave well enough alone. It's ironic, but we are rapidly pushing things towards the only scenario where it makes sense for him to use any of these weapons that he has. Think about it - we have the power to level Iraq. That power has deterrent value, right up until the time that we commit to a plan of action that results in Hussein's death or imprisonment. When Hussein sees that coming, given that he is a vengeful, evil mo-fo, if he has this stuff, which we seem to think that he does, what is the logical thing for him to do with it? That's right, use or it lose it, and if he's going down, taking out as many people with him as he can.

So think about that when millions are dying of smallpox in six months. All he has to do is infect one person, and get them on a plane to, say, Seatac. Or maybe he does ten, and sends them to Seatac, Tel Aviv, Heathrow, JFK, etc. You get the picture.

So, that's why the going to war issue is a little more complicated than just marching in there waving old glory. A lot of people could die, and some of them could be our schoolchildren and wives. Is cheap oil worth that?

But let's say that we're actually wrong about him having biologicals, and that we actually can take him out easily, and that we can do it (improbably) with none of our boys getting hurt. Unilateral invasion by the US is still not in our best interest, because it will further the image we have overseas of being bullies and tyrants ourselves. Our reputation for that behavior, deserved or not, allows characters like Bin Laden to motivate their cannon fodder. People don't fly airplanes into our buildings just because they think we make bad movies.

This is a conflict that we can win and lose at the same time. By acting like a bunch of cowboys in a weekend posse, we are playing into Saddam's hands, allowing him to paint his own propagandistic picture of us. That will contribute to our having to look over our shoulders for a very long time.

Don't get me wrong, I think it was a mistake not to go all the way to Baghdad in 1991, and I think something needs to be done now. We'll just be better off if we can engineer things so that world opinion is with us rather than against us.