Phil, I agree. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Oceania is at war with Eastasia; Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Or was it Eurasia? Hmm ...

Donna, what you say is true but don't make the mistake of assuming that anything will change with a new president (regardless which party is in power).
Alongside Saddam, people need to ask about other tyrants and dictators such as why the US tried to assassinate Castro from the 1950's onward (he would not take orders from the US political machine) or what happened to Qaddafi, who was among the most hated at one time to being almost invisible today.
Castro was hated by almost every president from Ike to Bush II and most tried many methods of having him murdered. There were over 600 verified plots hatched to get rid of Castro. Why? Then again, why did the US impose sanctions if not to try to punish the Cuban people enough to spur them into action to remove him, which if course, failed?
Stalin, Ferdinand Marcos (Phillipines), Pinochet (Chile), Shah Pahlevi (Iran), Mobutu (Zaire), Diem (S. Viet Nam), Park Yung Hee (S. Korea), Hussein II (Morocco), "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier (Haiti) and many more were considered "friends" of the US despite many instances of murder (political purges and mass murder, often with the assistance or at the urging of the CIA), embezzlement and other atrocities aimed at their own people.
The only thing that matters to whichever party is in power is that these tyrants and dictators are "friendly" with the US. They are no better than those the US opposes and which are sometimes switched from "friend" to "enemy" or vise versa.

Y'know, I just don't think that picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam from the mid-80s is a product of the "liberal media" ... and isn't it funny how the worm turns? One day we need Saddam to help us beat the nasty Iranians ... the next, he's evil and horrible and we have to take him out because he's got WMD (oops, no he doesn't, he used to - courtesy of the good ol' U.S. of by-God A. - but then he used them on his own people after Bush The First made a promise he didn't keep) and/or because they're in bed with al Qaeda and have 9/11 ties. What-EVER! Just 196 more days of this malarkey, and it can't be over soon enough.

Phil, he hasn't been a friend to us since the mid 80's or before. I suppose time is relative, but that seems like a long time to me.

Deb, 'assumption' is the mother of mistake.
Y'all need to remember that Saddam was a 'friend' of the US not too long ago.
I don't hate Bush any more or less than any other lying politician but I know manure when someone tries to feed it to me.
From what we know about Iraq, are they capable of enriching it to the point of use in nuclear weapons? I doubt it if what I hear is true, that they don't even have reliable phone or electric service.

A few questions for "doubting" Phil: Q1: What are the possible uses of yellowcake? A: refine it into a higher grade of unranium to enrich into weapons grade or for a nuclear reactor to create power. Was Iraq building peaceful nuclear power facilities? Q2: If the yellowcake was so harmless, why the concern over its falling into the hands of our enemies? A: It isn't harmless. Q3: Do you think Sadaam was stonewalling the U.S. and the U.N. inspectors purely to impress his audience? A: Nope. Looks like he had something to hide.
Phil - you sound a little like a member of the the Bushhater crowd.

They weren't stockpiling rocks or cannon balls, it was uranium! With the amount of oil that they have, I doubt seriously if they were planning on using it to establish an alternative fuel source. You obviously don't agree with Bush, and that is understandable, but don't let that blind you to Saddam's uranium cache. Unless of course this is all propaganda, and the uranium came from somewhere else. If that's the case, then feel free to continue hate Bush.

Warheads designed to carry gas, now consentrated uranium. The network media propogates lie after lie. Not only did Saddam intend to kill in masses, he already DID IT to his own people! History will judge this war and this president. 60 Minutes and Nightline prove what Adolf Hitler said, repeat a lie enough and it becomes the truth.

It's a long distance from yellowcake to nuclear fission. Yellowcake is not WMD or even evidence of it any more than a rock is evidence of a cannonball.

WOW, thought they never found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction? A "huge stockpile [550 metric tons] of concentrated natural uranium"..."can be enriched for use in ... nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment."