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Was it worth it? That's a hard question for any war, isn't it? The trouble with anything like this is that from our point of view, we cannot comprehend what it was like to live under the rule of Saddam Hussain and thus have no real idea on how it's changed today.

It may seem that violence and killing in Iraq has got worse since the war. This may be true, but part of it is due to the fact that our journalists have much more interest and freedom to move around Iraq today. Do you think the BBC or Sky could have swanned around Baghdad filming anything they wanted 10 years ago? It's a bit like people used to say: "there was never any cancer in my day"...........there was, it was just undiagnosed and people didn't live as long anyway.

Then there's the obvious fact that death tolls can be logically be calculated with more certainty than lives saved from the fall of the regime and all future lives that may or may not be saved depending on how it turns out.

I don't understand why there was plenty of support for ousting Milosevic but not Saddam. Both were murderous, racist tyrants that tried their best to commit genocide on a minority. Maybe there's some underlying subconscious racism it these peoples' inconsistency......Milosevic was on Europe's doorstep and it looked bad. Saddam was in the middle east and we should let the riff-raff get on with it. Let the rag-heads kill each-other as long as they don't bother us, eh?

The Kurds are some of the most liberal, secular people in the Muslim world with a rich culture of writing, music and art. They now have a large say in their own future and I'm glad of it. It was worth it.

hate the man he was my local mp in my constituancy and never ever in my life when he came "home" to sedgefield have i ever seen a more pompus wanker strutting about the place, the man was a a puppet pure and simple and as a ex ahem "special forces" guy once told me after ten years working in protection in iraq its nothing to do with oil its all to do with the MASSIVE water table underneath the ground over there thats what their all hinging bets on get the water make lots of money

Ah.........you see what happens when people read a few silly headlines, which turns into common knowledge and clich?.

If you'd actually read a little more into it you'll find that Tony Blair wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussain as soon as he saw the intelligence when he first became Prime Minster.

In a private conversation with the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party Paddy Ashdown, during mid-November 1997, Blair said ??I have now seen some of the stuff (intelligence) on this. It really is pretty scary. He (Saddam) is very close to some appalling weapons of mass destruction (WMD). I don?t understand why the French and others don?t understand this. We cannot let him get away with it. The world thinks this is just gamesmanship. But it?s deadly serious?? (Ashdown 2001:127).

and:

Further, Blair had been a proponent of action against former Iraq President Saddam Hussein long before the Bush administration began the buildup to war. In both public and private, Blair had settled upon the basic parameters of his policy toward Iraq as early as 1998. During the UN weapon inspectors crisis of that year, Blair stated that: ??The Saddam Hussein we face today is the same Saddam Hussein we faced yesterday. He has not changed. He remains an evil, brutal dictator . . . It is now clearer than ever that his games have to stop once and for all. If they do not, the consequences should be clear to all?? (Butler Report 2004:54, paragraph 212).



Tony Blair was very much his own man. I know that doesn't fit with the common, easy, yet wrong (but it kinda sounds good so I'll repeat it anyway) consensus on the whole Iraq conflict but there you go.