Danimal,
Why yes, actually I did. I thought the US and UK were at war with Iraq, and could no more declare war on a criminal organisation than they could on a cartel of dodgy bookmakers. “War on Terror” is just a phrase, like “War on Drugs”, “AIDS War”, “Trade War” or indeed “Portuguese Man-o-War”. The reason I brought up the assassination policy was to make the simple point that he could not complain (either literally or figuratively) if he got his own head shot off by an assassin. If assassination is fair game for the US it is fair game for others.
As for the “wishing death on people” caveat, this was aimed more at the moderators in order to make it clear that I don’t want to see anyone assassinated, even if George most certainly does. (Even implying that you wish someone dead can get you in trouble round here.) That people can, seemingly with impunity, wish death on SUSPECTED terrorists (notice how many such suspects are freed after interrogation because they turn out to be completely innocent?) is no reason for me to indulge in such abhorrent behaviour.
Beagle, yes he did drain the marshes. The number of refugees, not the body count, is more than a hundred thousand. The number actually killed is fewer than countless other genocides around the world, and probably even fewer than the number of Palestinians killed in the last decade.
Swoop, one cannot really address every single aspect of a given political phenomenon in a single letter but I did nod in the direction of the puppetmasters and American voting habits:
Mehitabel,
If “national interest” comes to the fore, it becomes open season. Kuwait was not a democracy in 1990. Saddam could therefore justify his invasion in the national interest of Iraq. It is not justifiable for a country to invade another on the basis of its national interest. This is what the UN was created for.
As for Mr. B’s conjecture regarding having the President endure parliamentary question time, oh dear lord they would rip him to shreds. Blair is an able orator and even he is often seriously wounded from the incisive barbs cast at him. The strategy which would make Bush look least ridiculous would be for him to hoot at his detractors at full volume while beating at the dispatch box and flinging his excrement with accuracy and vigour.