Can somebody call out the liars in our government. How are we supposed to make intelligent decisions, i.e., "government by the people" if our leaders spread disinformation. Tony Snow says the world is safer without Sadham Hussein - he was supporting and funding terrorism and threatening his neighbors. No, Tony - you're lying.
The world was safer when Sadham was keeping Iraqi sectarian violence in check, whether we detest his methods or not. Just as the world was safer when Marshall Tito was keeping the Yugoslavian union together - whether his methods were deplorable or not. After Tito died, Yugoslavia plunged into a myriad of terrible ethnic wars and horrifying genocide. Same thing in Iraq.
What terrorists was Sadham supporting/funding? My recollection is that he donated up to $25,000 each, to the families of suicide bombers who subsequently had their houses bulldozed to the ground by the Israeli military. Now these are brutally bad things all the way around. But in America, we don't bulldoze the houses of Timothy McVeigh's relatives. Nor do we consider them terrorists if they are subsequently cleared of involvement with the actions of their kin. Linking Sadham to terrorists because he gave monies to relatives of suicide bombers to rebuild, is a slurring of the truth.
The Republican rag mantra that "Sadham was threatening his neighbors" has to be truthified. His neighbors include Iran, Syria, and Lebanon - all members of what we now dread as the "Shia triangle" threatening the stability of the entire Middle East. Why would we want to heighten the power of the Shia triangle by getting rid of their greatest obstacle to regional influence? That's stupid, Tony - not in anyone's best interest.
Futhermore, as a sectarian government, Sadham's was the greatest enemy of the theocratic Taliban and Al Queda. Iraq was the model of non-theocracy in the Middle East, even more so than Israel. If theocratic revolution is the basis for Al Queda-led insurrections, why would we want to further their cause?
I would love to agree with Mr. Snow. I would love to say - the world is safer because General Battista was overthrown in Cuba, because Reza Pahlavi was ousted in Iran; or that we could fix North Korea by "eliminating" Kim. But the historical lessons demand that we know what we're doing before we simply chop off the head of the monster and declare victory.
Mind you, I'm not a historical scholar. Smart people like members of the press or the media, should be pointing out these historical facts to the American people before they are simply bulldozed into accepting the Administration's case for war. We need someone or some entity to do "fact check" or "truth check" on what our leaders are telling us.