# Who is worse..Saddam or Kim Jung Il. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 3, 2003, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395 "2003-02-03T00:41:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395/41 "2003-02-03T05:01:03Z")
**Airman Doors,USAF** …What do you think the price freeing the world of maniacs like Jung should be? Sometimes freedom comes at a high price. How many civilians do you think we killed freeing the world of Nazism and Japanese imperialism? ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395/42 "2003-02-03T05:05:36Z")
Who’s Jung? I always heard the current leader of North Korea was Kim Il Jong. (p.s. His family name is Kim.) ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395/43 "2003-02-03T05:09:56Z")
Nice post **Airman** It’s worth pointing out though that there are some fairly nasty worst case scenerios involving an attack on Iraq, though. From Time magazine: “The nightmare scenario unfolds like this: Shortly after U.S. forces invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein realizes that the end is nigh. Faced with imminent defeat and near certain death, Saddam decides to authorize one final, gruesome act of terror. He plucks a loyal operative from his security service and orders germ scientists to inject him. The operative is slipped out of the country and put on a commercial airliner bound for the U.S. Dozens of passengers within spitting distance of the Iraqi agent are unknowingly infected. Just as U.S. troops arrive in Baghdad, thousands of American civilians begin experiencing fever, nausea and backache—all the symptoms of smallpox. … A Rand Corp. report estimates that a smallpox attack carried out by teams of special-ops troops on the 10 largest U.S. airports could infect between 5,000 and 100,000 people.” That was from Time magazine. [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030203-411418,00.html](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030203-411418,00.html) ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395/44 "2003-02-03T05:12:12Z")
flowbark: “Fears of a smallpox attack on US cities that could kill up to 500,000 civilians proved unfounded.” I mangled that supposition earlier. I should have said, could _infect_ up to _100,000_ people. My source was the Time quote, in the previous post. ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395/45 "2003-02-03T05:13:58Z")
Hey…I like to be on a first name basis with world leaders…🙂 Forgive me if I get what I call him wrong. But it is Kim Jung Il. Surely the Russians would get it right. > [@](#): > > Kim Jung-il, North Korean leader, currently in Russia, will sign a declaration with the host country while in Moscow, says Alexander Losyukov, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. > **[Where Laws Do Not Apply](https://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/4121-elite/)** > > A "Super-Freedom" club in Japan formed by students of the country's elite universities of the country has been shut down and its members arrested ---
**Author:** ![Fugazi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f08c70/32.png) [@Fugazi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fugazi)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395/46 "2003-02-03T05:35:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Reeder \* > \*\ ***Fugazi** , how many times does you negotiate with a liar before you realize he’s lying? \*\* Oh, I agree he’s a liar, so is Hussein. When that liar can seriously damage or even completely wipe out your two strongest allies in the region, then you negotiate. We do still have the upper hand though, we shouldn’t give him anything until he gives up his nuclear program. I don’t think he would attack anyone unless we attacked him first. The biggest danger with Kim is him building more nukes and selling off a few excess ones. A limited ballistic missile defense would sure come in handy right about now. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395/47 "2003-02-03T08:01:16Z")
Russia might get it right in Russian, but what about in English? Oh, and you’re citing Pravda? Hah! ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395/48 "2003-02-03T08:08:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Monty \* > \*\*Russia might get it right in Russian, but what about in English? > > Oh, and you’re citing Pravda? Hah! \*\* Why shouldn’t he quote Pravda? After all, ‘Pravda’ means ‘Truth’ in Russian. That should count for something. Also, they have a cool story about [Saddam Hussien having a alien UFO.](http://english.pravda.ru/main/2003/01/31/42821.html) And the aliens are staying in Iraq as Saddam’s guests. And they are guarded by cow-sized scorpions that the aliens engineered. Can’t beat journalism like that with a stick! ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395/49 "2003-02-03T09:12:34Z")
—I agree Saddam is guilty and needs to be removed. My point is there are regimes in this world that are much worse than his. I do believe there are deeper reasons in the Bush administration for getting Saddam than they are telling us.— This is the problem. I have no beef with realpolitik, and I think our choices more than make sense. But you can’t appeal to a moral duty one minute, then pragmatism the next. If supplying terrorists, oppressing people (way worse in NK than in Iraq), etc. isn’t really why we care (since we feel no such duty in many other cases or other times in history), then it is ridiculous to appeal to it to justify war. You can’t suddenly wake up to moral evil when it’s a convienient talking point. I think that rhetoric does more harm than good, because few people one outside of the U.S. seriously buy it, and it makes us look a lot more fanatical than we really are. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-worse-saddam-or-kim-jung-il/152395.md?page=2)