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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> tvoivozhd---best answer to that is how many Americans did it take to keep 
> even Kamikaze Japanese submissive?  A relative handful, employing 
> subversion and the quite believable threat of extinction under mushroom clouds.

You have that backwards. First came the mushroom clouds, then came the 
occupation. Drug-enhanced kamikaze died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is 
absurd to compare the Japan occupation with the Iraq invasion. Japan 
surprise-attacked us at Pearl Harbor, threatening our very existence. The 
Japanese people knew that their leaders had dishonored them and deserved 
whatever we handed out after we beat them. During the two-and-a-half years 
I served in Japan I found the people very pragmatic and grateful for how we 
treated them after the crimes they had committed on us. Their deeply held 
honor system honored our strength and our decency.

> It was a stupid, arrogant and immoral invasion.
>
> tvoivozhd---why the hell do I have to keep repeating the truth---hasn't 
> anyone ever read a history book, or a newspaper since 1990? Immoral to get 
> rid of Saddam Hussein?  Stupid not to.

It is morally unsupportable to justify killing well over a hundred thousand 
men, women and children and to maim thousands more to depose one tyrant, no 
matter how heinous his actions. The Iraqi people allowed Saddam to come to 
power and it was their responsibility to depose him just as it is now their 
responsibility to create the nation they want. We could have defanged 
Saddam by other means and the inspections were well on the way to doing 
more of that. In fact, he was largely defanged already. We now know that he 
thought he had far more weapons that he did. His top advisors were lying to 
him. His day was drawing to an end. As I vainly repeated before the 
invasion, the proof of his weakness was the lack of fear by surrounding 
nations. But of course, they spoke the same language. "Slam dunk Tenet" 
should have been fired for gross incompetence.

I find it curious that otherwise intelligent people hold that getting rid 
of Saddam Hussein justified the most horrific inhumanity--the mass killing 
and maiming of tens of thousands of innocent human beings. Where is the 
outrage and the passion to rid the world of all the other despots who 
savage and ravage their countries?