PROTECTING THE INNOCENT
When I was growing up, it seemed like every history class I was ever in that dealt with the Holocaust always concluded with this sentiment: Never Again. Looking back, when you consider Uganda in the 70's, Iraq and the Kurds (an ethnic minority in northern Iraq) in the 80's, Rwanda in the 90's, and so many other instances of genocide and massive systematic murders, the only thing that can be concluded is that, for all those years the phrase "never again" meant simply that never again would we allow white people to kill huge numbers of other white people (outside of the iron curtain, we must add). In fact, odds are that at the very moment in the spring of the 7th grade that some well meaning history teacher was telling me "never again", Saddam Hussein's right hand man, "Chemical" Ali-Hessan al-Majid, was busy killing Kurds by the thousands; 200,000 when all was said and done.

The facts of the case are that Saddam Hussein is not some slightly evil dictator with a couple of political prisoners and his own TV station. He is guilty of genocide. And he has killed so many political dissenters that there are virtually none left in the country. 200,000 Iraqi citizens have disappeared into the prisons and never returned. In addition to his extensive layers of police, military, and intelligence protecting his regime, Saddam has convinced everyone in the populace that everyone else will report them to the authorities immediately if they exude even the slightest whiff of subversive talk or behaviour. To quote veteran BBC foreign correspondent John Sweeney: "I have been to Baghdad a number of times. Being in Iraq is like creeping around inside someone else's migraine. The fear is so omnipresent you could almost eat it. No one talks."

Much of the anti-war propaganda is focused on the horrors of war. I do not wish to diminish the legitimacy of pointing this out, nor do I wish to descend into histrionics, but I think if you're going to listen to that hype, then you ought to listen to the hype from the other side as well. Here is a profile of the horrors of Saddam Hussein's regime:

"This is a regime that will gouge out the eyes of children to force a confession from their parents and grandparents. This is a regime that will crush all the bones of the feet of a two-year old girl to force her mother to divulge her father's whereabouts. This is a regime that will hold a nursing baby at arm's length from its mother and allow the child to starve to death to force the mother to confess. This is a regime that practices systematic rape against its female victims. This is a regime that will behead a young mother in the street in front of her house and children because her husband was suspected of opposing the regime." The list goes on.

Oil is indeed the primary reason that the U.S. and the world are looking at Iraq right now. That is fortunate, because without it the Iraqi people might be left to their suffering alone.