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If you want a refutation....

There is no doubt that Saddam is a murderous tyrant. But that characteristic does not distinguish him from several dozen other rulers around the world. If overthrowing a dictator is sufficient reason for the United States to go to war, one must ask how many other holy crusades are in our future. When does the United States attack North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Sudan's genocidal slave-masters or Burma's murderous military junta - to name just a few of the world's most odious regimes?

This is not a stand-alone justification, and nobody advances it as such. But it is a good justification if you are torn on the wisdom of an invasion otherwise. Even if it turns out that he doesn't have WMD, we still will have done a good thing. Plus, we do not have a legal justification to attack those countries, and Saddam's violation of those resolutions and the terms of the cease fire distinguish him from those other leaders. So, he's not only a bad guy, but one we can legally justify removing.

The United States is supposed to be a constitutional republic. As such, the job of the U.S. military is to defend the vital security interests of the American people.

That's a non sequitor. Being a constitutional democracy is completely irrelevant to whether or not you have a proactive foreign policy. You can have an internationalist foreign policy, or an isolationist one, depending upon the views of your elected officials.

American dollars are too scarce and American lives too precious for such feckless ventures.

"Feckless ventures?" Pure rhetoric with no evidence or supporting analysis. Plus, its irrelevant because our primary motivation is not to remove a dictator.

That is a fantasy, not a realistic goal. It is highly improbable that overthrowing Saddam's regime and setting up a democratic successor in Iraq would lead to a surge of democracy in the region.

Nobody thinks that will happen overnight. BUT, U.S. troops remain in that region to protect against Saddam trying another invasion south, and their presence is resented by the Arab world. Defeating Saddam enables us to end our presence in places like Saudi Arabia, which may reduce anti-Americanism. That, in turn, may reduce the appeal of the radical fundamentalists, and so lessen to the risk of governments permitting some democratic reforms.

Indeed, it probably wouldn't even lead to a stable, united, democratic Iraq over the long term. A U.S. occupation force would be needed for many years just to keep a client regime in power.

Iraq could splinter, but that would just make them less of a threat. And there's no evidence that you would need a U.S. occupation force for years. Saddam is unpopular, so you don't have to suppress people to restrain their rage at him being gone. There's no evidence that a U.N. presence won't be able to accomplish the same thing.

The harsh reality is that the Middle East has no history of democratic rule, democratic institutions or serious democratic movements. To expect stable democracies to emerge from such an environment is naive.

It's not an overnight process. Getting rid of a kooky, dangeroud dictator is one step down that road. Iran, for one, does show signs of moving down the road to democracy.

Moreover, even in the unlikely event that a wave of democratic revolutions swept the Middle East following the U.S. conquest of Iraq, the United States would probably not like the results. If free elections were held today in such countries as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, they would produce virulently anti-American governments.

He's right here, but he misses the point. Remember, the U.S. was most popular in that region when we liberated Kuwait, then withdrew most of our troops. It's the continued presence of those troops 10 years later, and the need to constantly badger Saddam, that is causing problems. It's the status quo that created that hatred. So let's kick him out, withdraw our troops, and reduce anti-Americanism.

A war with Iraq is likely to have the opposite effect. It would serve as a recruiting poster for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

A horrible argument. Bin Laden had no shortage of recruits before we attacked Saddam. The problem is that we were hated, but not feared. If we're going to be hated, its best to be feared as well.

However much Americans might believe that an attack on Iraq is justified, it would be perceived throughout the Islamic world as aggressive U.S. imperialism. That perception would be intensified if the United States occupies Iraq for an extended period and takes control of the country's oil resources.

It's imperialism if we go in and stay for an extended period. Which is exactly why we pull out after a short period. The U.N. would love to step in there and help out at that point. We would then be perceived as liberators, not conquerors.

As far as intimidating other regimes is concerned, if the U.S. ouster of the Taliban government in Afghanistan did not show how perilous it is to harbor anti-American terrorists, it is not apparent how overthrowing the Iraqi government would convey that message with greater clarity.

Because Iraq would show the seriousness with which we treat WMD. And it will show that we don't consider the task ended with the Taliban. In contrast, if we now back down from invasion, as the author advocates, we would be sending the exact opposite message we sent in Afghanistan. It would give a green light for countries like Syria to develop their own programs, because they know we'll just back down.

The United States successfully deterred the likes of Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong - two brutal and erratic rulers. And those dictators possessed nuclear, not just chemical and biological, weapons, whereas there is no credible evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The pro-war faction has never explained why the United States cannot deter a garden-variety thug like Saddam Hussein.

Fighting the last war, eh? Another terrible argument. Deterrence worked because of MAD. But if the weapons used cannot be traced back to Baghdad, then the deterrent doesn't exist.

Saddam and the other members of the Iraqi political elite know that threatening, much less attacking, the United States would be an act of suicide. Young, useful idiots like the Sept. 11 terrorists may be suicidal, but rulers of countries almost never are. Iraq's rulers know that attacking the United States would lead to an annihilating counterstroke from the world's largest nuclear arsenal.

This is perhaps his worst and most flawed argument. Saddam tried to murder President Bush in 1993, and we basically did nothing about it. By the author's logic, Saddam should never have attempted it because of the alleged deterrent. The fact that he did attempt it shows that the deterrent does not have the effect the author claimed.

Nor is it likely that Iraq would pass along chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaida.

Assertion without evidence.

Evidence of a connection between Baghdad and al-Qaida is flimsy at best.

He oughta read his history. Where was the evidence of the Nazi-Soviet Pact prior to the partition of Poland? Allegedly "flimsy" evidence is not the same as "no" evidence, and is this really something where we can afford to guess wrongly? Plus, he's making a very dangerous assumption here. He is assuming that there is no link. Where is his evidence for that? If anything, the recent statement attributed to OBL suggests that moslem fundamentalists may indeed cooperate with someone like Saddam against a common enemy like the U.S.

Moreover, Saddam knows that he would be at the top of a very short list of suspects as the source of such a weapon if al-Qaida detonated one against an American target.

And does the author seriously believe we'd nuke Baghdad simply because they would be one of a short list of suspects? I don't think Saddam believes we would either. And of course, remember the non-deterred attack on GHWB in 1993.

The only circumstance under which Saddam might pass a weapon to al-Qaida is if the United States invades Iraq because he would then have nothing to lose.

Gonna be mighty difficult for him to do that with our troops barrelling down his throat.

Going to war is serious business....The only pertinent issue is whether Iraq poses a serious, imminent threat to the United States, thereby justifying pre-emptive war.

That's the wrong standard. The risk of harm is far, far too great to set the bar so high as to insist on proof of an imminent threat. We know that he's had WMD in the past. We know he has used them. We know that he lied about possessing biological weapons and continued to produce them during the first four years of inspections. We know that he was willing to put his country through crippling sanctions to avoid having the inspections restarted. Why would he do all that if 1) he wasn't developing or retaining WMD, and 2) possessing WMD wasn't very, very important to him?

Sorry, the trust factor on this guy is zero. He's gotta go.