were urging George I to follow through on his promises to Saddam's opponents. But, after having sold Saddam as somewhere between Satan and Hitler, he decided that Saddam was "a stabilizing influence in the region". Which, of course, is more important than the lives of a few thousand innocent or better people.

That, incidentaly, is why we didn't get that massive swell of support from the Iraqi people. Not that they didn't want Saddam gone, they just understood Bush honor.

I suspect not old enough to have observed the first Gulf War from an adult perspective. You write like a 20-something.

But those of us who were actually watching saw a varity of points of view, not just "no blood for oil". Yeah, there is the moronic fringe left. They make good TV. They don't speak for everyone who isn't a drooling dittohead.

Most of us, or at least those of us who were me, came reluctantly to believe George I's line about how bad a guy Saddam was. And then, after the military did their thing so excellently, George I changed his tune and Saddam became "a stabilizing influence in the region". Many of us said, not "no blood for oil" but "Hey, Saddam's evil like you said, and you did kind of promise to protect those people who joined our side." THe answer was something about not hving a UN mandate.

Some of the lefties had been complaining about our govornment's support of Saddam for about 20 years at the time. That stuff you are so pleased to point at - the mass graves, the torture, the fact that Saddam is (was?) a really, really bad guy - we had been pointing it out only to hear about sovreignty, the wrongness of nation-building, the lack of evidence, yadda yadda yadda, so that's why we have to keep giving him weapons and money, why we have to compliment him while he's gassing the Kurds. He did that while he was one of our allies, and our govornment didn't so much as suggest it wasn't a nice thing to do, much less stop selling him chemicals.