I have been following this thread with interest and my question is, what do you do with a bully?

How do you handle him or her? How long do you let someone continue to build his power, torture and kill his own people, aid other terrorists, and amass weapons of mass destruction? Until he uses those weapons? Invades another country? Until his own people who have no power and are completely under this thumb can overthrow him? Are YOU willing to continue to let innocent Iraqi's die and be tortured just because he has a bad day? Doesn't that bother you? You all talk about humaneness like only you're the only ones who have it and the USA is the bully. I question your humaneness.

The unfortunate fact that the US has had to come to the aid of other countries to help them fight off aggressors has to be galling. Europe looked the other way and let Germany bully it's way through the countryside and caused two world wars. Well you can see right there how well ignoring the problem and attempts at diplomacy worked those times. All the ignoring does is allow the bully, any bully, to build his strength and think he can get away with more and more and more because in his egotistical mind everyone else is afraid of him. It is very hard to deal with a psychopath with intellectual/common sense/common ground goals. People like Saddam do not think like us in the US, and they don't think like Europeans either. His is a powerful man who cares little for his own people or those of other countries. He is only interested in being important and having power and control. Negotiation is not even in his vocabulary, so diplomacy will not go far with him. The only thing a bully understands is being beaten. Economic sanctions might have hindered him some, but all in all did little good in keeping him reined in.

Now having said all this, I DO have serious reservations about the direction this confrontation is taking. But I'm also realistic enough to realize that Saddam is not likely to compromise and all of a sudden start admitting he has and surrender his chemical and nuclear weapons. The UN inspection team has said what they are finding is suspicious, that nothing adds up, that they are being lied to. Well, that certainly shows just how willing Saddam is to avoid a showdown doesn't it?. So do we let him use one or more of those weapons first ....maybe on a neighboring country... before we're convinced that yeah, maybe, this guy really IS dangerous? If a bully lived down the street from you and wouldn't let your car go by without throwing stones at it, how would you handle that? Go to the UN you say? Right, let them figure it out.

The issue here is NOT how much per capita people send in aid to other countries. The issue really comes down to how long and how much do you let a bully get away with before enough becomes enough. Yeah, maybe we are egotistical in the States about our military power and technological weapons, but I don't see any other country being entirely capable on their own to keeping a bully subdued. European and American philosophies do not make much of an impression with this man. The Middleastern culture is different and their thinking is different (look at the Taliban). Add to that mix a psychotic who glories in power and that he is right and EVERYONE else is wrong....well I have my doubts about a happy outcome.

It will be interesting and very telling to see what Colin Powell uses tomorrow at the UN as proof of Iraq's lies and subterfuge. If the case cannot be made strongly of wrong-doing then I am the first to say the US has to back off. However I have enough faith in his intergrity that what is presented will not be a pack of lies as so many of you think. I think tomorrow's speech will settle no matter what any of us thinks.