I really appreciated hearing your perspective last night :) It made me think about a few things…I do agree brining ‘democracy’ to oppressed people is a noble intention. After all we can not turn a blind eye to the oppression, torture and killings used by Saddam against insurgents in order to maintain an iron fist control of the population in Iraq.

So it would be great if the US had abandoned the violent mechanisms of control used by Saddam… lets see... besides the 7000 or so killed in the invasion…It appears to me the US government has also resorted to killings to maintain control of the country as well. Are the killings of ‘insurgents’ that rebel against US more ‘just’ then the killings of those rebelling against Saddam? Ok maybe the US killings are not of the same ‘magnitude’ or we have more “noble” plans for the lives of Iraqis then that of Saddam or the current Iraqi ‘insurgents’. But if our intentions where so much more noble why would we be hiring the very thugs that used to benefit from Saddam Hussein’s regime (1). It seems to me if Iraqi liberation was our primary concern it would be a bad idea to hire the very people that where just recently oppressing the Iraqis. And if the US has such good intentions why do we have people in charge of operations that worked with Saddam after it was obvious Saddam did not have the best intentions. People who assisted and worked with Saddam have shown that human rights violations do not matter to them when we share “topics of mutual interest”(2), how can those same people be trusted to not resort to that same sort of abuses when mutual interest is present in the future leadership possibilities.

So I agree if motives for installing ‘democracy’ and freeing the Iraqi people from oppressive régime are ‘just’ motives, possibly even ‘just’ motives for the crimes we committed to peruse them. But I have a hard time being convinced those ideals are being perused seriously. When we do things like hire the people that we supposabley where removing from power, and invariably resort to similar oppressive tactics used by the ‘evil regime’ in order to maintain control of the country.

Ultimately it is the historical record of US governments installment of ‘democracies’ in past that really shapes my opinion of current US actions…I would really recommend reading some of Noam Chomsky formal writings, he has very well articulated and strong arguments about the nature of US foreign policy in the past 40 years. Here is an informal piece about Saddam’s capture he wrote this week.

Furthermore www.zmag.org is a really good resource for non-corporate news and editorial.
... In a side note I originally ran into Chomsky in my computer science theory courses as his work with unambiguous grammars had a big impact on computer language design.
1)http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A858-2003Nov4.html
“The U.S. administrator of Iraq has decided to conditionally support the creation of an Iraqi-led paramilitary force composed of former employees of the country's security services and members of political party militias.”
(I don’t know if the article is still online but that is a quote from it)
2) Rumsfeld comment about meetings with Saddam

a comment sent to the writer of the article: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/7516810.htm

in the article ' Saddam will have no trouble finding a lawyer, experts say' you go though a few potential defense strategies but fail to mention any historical context other then what the US government has said to be his wrong doings.

Historical context would include the US involvement in the Kurdish killings: Such as lifting the no-fly zone allowing Saddam and to bomb the Kurdish people that where rebelling because the US instructed them to do so. This is all very well documented Bushes rise up speech, the lifting of the no fly zone, not to mention the continue support of Turkeys bombing of the Kurds with US arms. The US never wanted the Kurdish revolution to successes and documents have been uncovered that say just that. Without historical context and fair treatment of history how can your article be anything but US government propaganda?

More importantly think of the injustice being done to the victims, by only reporting their deaths when at the had of our 'enemies' and ignoring their suffering when the US government is at fault or involved. That is the greatest injustice and it is morally wrong. Especially since we as Americans need to know what our government is doing so we can affect the policy that leads to reduce the support we give for these atrocities.

To classify Saddams wrong doings as completely unique and performed with only "evil-doing" context, is misguided and paints a picture of the US giving a fuck about humanitarian disasters when in fact massive amounts of evidence point to otherwise.

in case you actually do not have the historical context or you are unaware then I have some recommended reading:
http://www.aprl52.dsl.pipex.com/eric/EHNFZ2.htm

ps (I might have mixed up some names in the read the linked article for more accurate details)

I don't know... how much are you "benefiting" from the fruits of Iraqi
liberation? fewer teachers for your kids, fewer firemen, less pay for police and
firemen and military personal loss of friends and family both mentally and physical
in Iraq , etc not to mention the shit load of Iraqis that are not going to be
very found of "Americans" at the moment and will they be less or more likely to
join or create ‘terrorist groups’?, you tell me? And what about The 20 or so attacks
that go on every day in Iraq, sure is easy to say they where ‘evil terrorist’
to begin with so they should be cleansed of the earth… but would those ‘evil doers’
be attacking Americans if Americans where not there? Or just going about their
daily lives as I go about mine? They are just people defending their country the
same way I would do if we where invaded.

Bottom line conditions are not better for Iraqis and even if the conditions where perfect freedom for every Iraqi, it would not make the slaughter of over 7000 civilians ‘the right thing to do’, its like saying because 9-11 brought the people of United States together it was a worthy cause to kill all those who died in the trade center attacks. And it saddens me equally.

The only base for my morality is on the reverse context…. I know just because
the US has over 1 million noviolent political prisnoers in jail, has engaged in aggressive wares against sovern nations, probably has more then a
few weapons of mass destruction of its own, has a open declaration that we
investigate the deployment of “bunker busting nukes”, and a leader that much of the world sees as a threat to world
peace …which in the end adds up to very close to how our government labeled Saddam.

But I don't want other countries bombing us to liberate us. It is our responsibility
to deal with Bush’s voter fraud and undemocratic accusation of the Whitehouse,
It is not some other countries responsibility to bomb us take over our government
and say that we are liberated from the evil Bush.

What could we have done or can we do now to deal with governments like that of Saddam well: We could have funded non-violent organizations sent in resources for community building and resources for non-violent progressive reform, Similar to the actions of the international solidarity movement is undertaking in occupied Palestine. Giving realitivly very small percentage of resources to non-violent observers, community organizers, and weapons inspectors would have been many times better moraly and would have much better served the "proclaimed" goals of this unjust-war.
We don’t always need kill people to make change. In fact I would argue that no meaningful change can come about in the embracing the very qualities you wish to change. So when we build up the Iraqi military (how do you think the 300 that quit are going to use their expert traning) it will be the same as when we built up the afganastan one. All this semes so true and logical but at the same time I do belive other viewpoints (like thouse on fox news) are just as valid in that people belive them, I would hope to change that but recognize their truth. I understand a lot of people actualy felt threatened by Iraq.

I don't want all this change at once it is only important to recognize which direction every event is going. The war on Iraqi was a very bad direction to go in, and we are going in a very bad direction in the way we are currently runing the ocupation.