[punky]

Originally Posted by Graham

Please show me anything where any of them said that Saddam should be *left *in power. They, as you, yourself said: "Disagree with the war, by all means" but I don't recall anyone saying "oh no, let's just leave him there and do nothing".

If France wanted to remove Saddam, they wouldn't have threaten to veto any 2nd resolution put to them. You think the "no-war-for-oil" brigade would suddenly be behind the coalition if we had got a second resolution?

I suggest you visit Amnesty International's website http://amnesty.org/ and look at all the *other* examples of people being killed or tortured in the world and ask yourself why he isn't doing anything about *them* too.

I am well aware of what is going on in other countries. I have been vocal in my support of real action in Zimbabwe that Blair won't entertain, along with Darfur, and the other countries, like Executive Outcomes in places like Sierra Leone. I do also know you can't just go bombing every country into oblivion either, and that violence has to be a last resort. Nor can you enforce a western belief system on non-western countries.You judge each case as it comes.

And indeed Amnesty's current headline article states

"A year ago photographs of Iraqi detainees being tortured by the US military at Abu Ghraib prison shocked the world. Abuses by US forces in the †œwar on terrorââ‚Ã⠀šÃ‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ÂÂ� have not been confined to Abu Ghraib; punishment of those involved or responsible has been inadequate; and torture is also used by the Iraqi security forces."

And those involved have been, and are being punished for that. The consider punishment inadequate, so thats a matter of opinion. I think its naive to think the Iraqi Security Forces would not abuse prisoners rights (the US and the UK cannot either), but I would like to compare that article with Saddam era Iraq, because I think whatever the US/UK/ISF have done in Iraq absolutely pales in comparison to what Saddam, Uday and Qusay did. I haven't heard about the US feeding people into plastic shredders lately.

In the words of our own Attorney General:

"regime change cannot be the objective of military action" although removing Saddam Hussein would be legal "if it can be demonstrated that such action is a necessary and proportionate measure to secure the disarmament of Iraq".

And like others, he is worried that Saddam might have a few old SCUD missiles around, but doesn't seem to worried about what Saddam, Uday and Qusay were doing at the same time. I just think thats so distasteful.

Given that it has now been shown that Iraq did *not* have WMDs and thus the "disarmament" of Iraq was *not* necessary, the only conclusion is that this was an *ILLEGAL* action and I don't know about you, but I think it's a *good* idea to oppose illegal actions, no matter how morally justified you may consider them because that leads down a very dangerous path.

Like I said before, I didn't know Gulf war 2 if Iraq had banned weapons, but I did know what Saddam, etc was upto. I support the war on that principal, and like I said at the start of this thread, I would vote to remove a fully-disarmed Saddam again, if I had to.