After 9/11 the rules of the game changed. What was once tolerable, is now intolerable.

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was the equivalent of the crack house in the middle of the neighborhood that people just tried to ignore. But then… Maybe it wasn’t Saddam’s crack dealers that broke into your house and murdered your wife and kids, but guess what, you are no longer going to tolerate those low lives anymore.

That means you go and take care of it, because it is what has to be done, quagmire or no quagmire.

Yeah, there are going to be some messy points in that effort, but IN THE END, you are striving for a more peaceful neighborhood.

Some relevant points:

– Gulf War One ended with a Cease-Fire, meaning it was NOT over. It was a “Timeout”. When a cease-fire is broken by one side, there need be NO justifications for the other side to resume hostilities as they have, by definition, already been resumed.

– On average at least once a day during Operation Northern Watch and Southern Watch, Saddams’s military placed anti-aircraft assets into forbidden zones in VIOLATION of that cease-fire and then engaged Coalition pilots.

Soundbite version: Iraqi troops fired upon or threatened to fire upon U.S. pilots on a DAILY basis, thereby violating the cease-fire from 1991.

– Thankfully for the pilots training and our advanced technology, no pilots were lost, even though Saddam offered bounties for shooting down or capturing American pilots.

I’m hoping no one will seriously advocate a position that demurs on taking action when our people in the US military are continually threatened and attacked by those who have a clear history of aggression, chemical weapons usage and support of terrorist organizations.

Or is it the position of the AntiWar Left that that is ok?

Saddam was more dangerous in 1994 than in 2003, since at least then Iraq actually had WMDs. So yeah, taking him out in 1994 would have made more sense than taking him out in 2003 but even then, would it be worthwhile with a potential ‘quagmire’ in both cases?

That seven years before 9/11 we thought Saddam wasn’t worth more effort?

Guess what?

Times change.

Reality is not static, so an analysis of the value of taking out Saddam from 1994 is different from 2003.

Guess that means that the “neocons” are “flexible” and “nuanced”.