Wulfe, surely you can see the connections? Big oil - oil fields in Iraq. Iraq not like US - puppet regime will.
It's not like Iraq suddenly did *much* more than they have in the last 10 years. It's not like the announce that they weren't gonna follow the nuclear nonproliferation plan. They didn't suggest they'd unleash 'a sea of fire' in the US - nor did they suggest that they already had or could build at least two nuclear devices. Yet Bush plays hardball - and that's because its in American interests to control Iraqi oil fields. In NK there are some water buffalos and a little rice. Had NK had oil like Iraq, Kim Yong would have been taken care of long ago. That diddlyer is even worse than Saddam - starving millions of his own people. He's responsible for more deaths than Saddam. So I'd say take them both out.
Yeah, he's a megalomaniac murderer. He didn't kill his own people with gas though; you'll notice that Iraq is divided into tribal groups. 'Own people' means your own tribe - no one else. So when he gassed some Iraqis, he wasn't gassing his own - at least not in his mind. Of course it was an evil act.
Having said that, I think he's an utter bastard who should be forcibly removed from power. OTOH, I refuse to be blind to the economic ties between the administration and the private economic sector (oil). And that's all I want proponents of the war to admit - that the primary motive (or at the very least secondary) is $$$. And incidentally Cheney and others stand to make a buck on it.