[cloud8]

Answer them back! These time-worn platitudes do not hold up!! Here are some suggestions:

Give peace a chance

Get real, Flower Child. This lunatic Saddam has had more than a decade to disarm peacefully. Now it's time to give war a chance. We need to rid the world of Saddam and his arsenal of anthrax, chemicals and nukes before he uses it.

Let the inspectors have more time

That's what people were saying when Saddam threw the inspectors out in 1997. The inspectors can have another 20 years, but they're not going to find anything as long as Saddam plays his shell game.

Blix says he's making progress

Hans Blix was hand-picked by Saddam.

A war will make us more enemies

A war will show the world that America means what it says.

It's all about oil

If we had wanted the oil, we easily could have taken it in the first Gulf War. It's France & Russia who have billions at stake over Iraq oil deals. Setting up a stable democracy in the mid-East is what it's about.

[Steve_Seattle]

"setting up a stable democracy in the Middle East is what it's all about"

I agree, I think that's the main motive, and hardly anyone has mentioned this angle. I think all the talk about WMD is basically an excuse (not to say that SH probably doesn't have some stashed away), and that our real goal is to try to help create a democratic Iraq as a model for the Arab world. Iraq has the best infrastructure to do this, plus it is already operating on a largely secular model.

[1Old Pro]

Their reasons are easily debated and they love to debate them. They offer up more circular reasoning. I don't bother to argue because it's not about war. It's about their hatred for Bush so I cut to the chase and ask them why the hate Bush.