[f7Oshawn]

This is an email from a co-worker. Help me out with this. Thanks in advance!!

[Tijeras_Slim]

Reply, why are you wasting the company's time with this?

PS:Don't tell him you're freepin' at work.

[VRWC_minion]

To get big oil contracts for Bush and to spank Saddan for daddy, of course.

[txzman]

"Maxim did a story on them about a year before all of this went down"

If this is where this guy gets his education, hang it up. You don't have enough time to spend twelve years educating him. Just use the analogy of "OK, this guy comes to your house rapes your daughter and shoots your sons dead, then dares you to do anything". Then walk away while he thinks about it.

[Eala]

Try these links for some material (oblique to his questions, perhaps):

Democrat Quotes on Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1051684/posts

Impeach the President (for lying about WMDs)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1067552/posts

[Billthedrill]

The libs asking it this way are tilting the playing field - moral justification for going to war with someone does not obligate one to actually do so. What Saddam did that was "different" was to invade two of his neighbors and blatantly flout the postwar agreements that allowed him to remain in power, depending on those same agreements to prevent the United States from removing him. And the threat of WMDs, at least, was very real and actively cultivated by him. If it was a bluff (and I wouldn't say that it was that, yet) then it was a very convincing one, and he should be the last to complain if we acted as if we believed it.

[Prolifeconservative]

Okay, let's stay with this email and the simple analogy he made about neighbors, the neighborhood, it's noone's business, blah, bhah, bhah.

Ask this person if perhaps one day he looked out his window and across the street he saw his neighbor being burglarized, the thugs had backed up a pickup to the front door, and were taking his most valuable items and loading them onto their getaway vehicle. How would he respond? Would he call the police or try to stop the injustice himself, or would he just promptly close the curtains and thank his lucky stars it wasn't him being robbed. I'd wait for his response before responding further.

Here's why staying with HIS analogy is so important: Sadaam Hussein invaded Kuwait lest anyone forget. He wanted to take all the valuable property (oil) that rightly belonged to another country. This man invaded another country, so our we, the most powerful country (police) supposed to just sit by and watch this man plunder.

Hussein has a track record. If he could invade another country like a cold-blooded criminal, well then, what else is he capable of.

Anyway, stay with this guy's anology as much as possible, he's the one that steered it that way in the first place.....SO NUKE IT!

[Dr. Frank fan]

Yeah, but was he aggressive towards the US?

The answer here is "yes". The US is after all the country which waged a war against him in 1991, then blockaded his country and (occasionally) bombed his country for the next 12 years. It's weird that your friend doesn't seem to think this would make Hussein even the least bit aggressive toward the US in response. "Liberals" are usually pretty good at understanding Why They Hate Us. Yet here we smacked a guy out of Kuwait, ruining his ambitions, and then we bomb and patrol and blockade his country for 12 years and your friend seems to assume Hussein would just take all that in stride, "hey guys no hard feelings, all in good fun, what".

There are alot of Sadam Husseins in the middle east and Africa. There is caos like this going on in the world everyday.What did Saddam do that was so different from what other dictators are doing? How did what Saddam do effect the US and why isn't the US going after all the other dictators that are like him?

Interesting question. He invaded another country For Oil, prompting us to intervene to force him back out (killing some 150 of our troops, injuring who knows how many more, not to mention "Gulf War Syndrome" which was perhaps caused by our need to vaccinate our troops against his potential use of bioweapons...). So after that, we had to blockade his country and send troops to protect the Saudi regime from him, for the next 12 years. This all cost us money and time and resources, and also stirred up resentment against us which contributed to the 9/11 attacks.

That's, uh, bad. I agree that there are bad guys in, like, Africa too but dealing with/containing them, and their continued reign as dictators, has not caused us quite so many problems. In general I'd be for taking out other dictators too, but bite off what you can chew.

There are too many other countries that don't do things the way we do things.

"Not doing things the way we do things" has got nothing to do with any of this. Your co-worker is seriously misinformed if he thinks we invaded Iraq "because they don't do things the way we do things".

We can't go around telling the whole world how to live their lives.

In some cases, we most certainly can, and even must: namely, if "how they live their lives" causes us significant problems. For example, "how the Japanese lived their lives" in 1941 included: Attacking Pearl Harbor. We could, and did, go around telling them not to live their lives that way.

Similarly, "how Iraqians lived their lives" included the following: Being dominated and ruled by a dictator with powerlust and designs on ruling over a nationalist Araby for he and his descendants, profiting immensely from the oil reserves he controlled, threatening and plotting to take over neighbors' oil reserves, including those of Kuwait, which we prevented him from doing via warfare, but at the additional cost of a twelve-year blockade and protecting the Saudis, which angered some other people who eventually murdered 3000 of us on 9/11/2001. No offense to them personally of course but I was getting sick and tired of the Iraqians "living their lives" this "way" (i.e. having a dictator who caused us so many problems), and so we can and DID do something about it.

You have to stay out of other peoples busines whether you like what they are doing or not.

I disagree. Does "other peoples' business" extend to torture, rape, murder, extortion, and power-grabbing? I don't like those things, and I see no reason why I "have to stay out" if I see it going on.

Anyway, that aside, why does this guy call himself a "liberal"? Shouldn't liberals care about other peoples' liberty?

You are a home owner now. You will without a doubt not like everything all of your neighbors do that live within your vicinity. Does that give you the right to go onto their property and change anything?

If those neighbors are violating peoples' rights, then sure.

Anyway, the analogy to home ownership and the language of "rights" is inapt. Nation-states are not "homes" and neighboring nation-states are not like neighboring homes, and in the interaction between nation-states there is no such thing as "rights". "Rights" per se don't have anything to do with it.

This whole costly mess wasn't about WMD. Saddam went after Bush senior. This president had a personal score to settle at the cost of the tax payers in this country.

He's free to believe that if he wants. I'm free to think he's a loon.

I am very familiar with what Saddam and his sons did. Maxim did a story on them about a year before all of this went down.

This guy's really informed, he reads Maxim!!

I am just as frustrated as anyone else in this country but if you want to t take someone out, take out Osam bin Laden.

Where is he, genius?

What makes him think OBL's even still alive?

[supercat]

I would ask the liberal friend by what means, aside from removal from power, a dictator can be punished for wrongful actions.

[Fenris6]

The short answer is that we took down Saddam to pevent him from annonymously passing off Bio & Chem WMDs to Al-Queda.

To followup on the (weak0 analogy - if someone across town was helping thugs with info & techniques on how to kidnap & rape women in your neighborhood, you'd want them taken out. You'd still want the thugs (Al Queda) taken down too, but its just good sense to take out the peeps who are willing to supply the thugs with lockpicks & duct tape.

You'll note that Al_Queda is *still* resorting to hijacking aircraft and crashing them into Americans. Thats bad, but a whole lot better than some of the things they could do if backed by a nation-state with the ability to manufacture Anthrax and VX.