Personally, I'd feel a little oppressed if I had to live stuck in "intellectual glue" to the extent that the neocon / zionist hawks are. As near as I can tell, aside from general distaste for large scale killing, my own position is sort of what Nadine calls the Scowcroft "realist" line. That might or might not be enough to get me banned from the protest movement, hard to say.
There was an article in fluffy old Parade magazine on Sunday which ranked the "10 worst dictators", by David Wallechinsky of People's Almanac fame. He put Saddam at #3, behind Kim Ill Duck and the Saudis, third Axis leg Iran didn't rank and unindicted terrorist co-conspirator Syria got a mere honorable mention. At the end of the little Iraq part, he had this interesting line:
After the Gulf War, Saddam was considered over the hill as a global-scale dictator until President George W. Bush began to promote his status as a threat to world peace.
And the promotion will continue for at least a few more weeks. Armament wise, though, Saddam still looks pretty darn over the hill. Aside from what was destroyed in '91 and during subsequent inspections, Iraq probably hasn't gotten significant spare parts for its remaining tanks or planes since '91. Last mention I saw, they were trying unsuccessfully to smuggle Mig-21 parts from the former Yugoslavia. I'd don't know, but I imagine a creakier military establishment would be hard to find. |
