Interesting you bring this up- considering this was a war in which Iraq was championed by the West and Saddam was seen as one of our guys throughout the whole thing. So much so that we (the West) provided him with chemical and biological weapons, satellite photography and intelligence. We even turned a blind eye to the attrocities he committed against his own people during the 80's, largely using weapons provided by us, because he was at that time considered a "good guy" since he was fighting the evildoers in Iran.

Then after that disastrous war, since Iraq was pretty much bankrupted and massively indebted to countries like Kuwait, who were now calling in their debts and would have put Iraq in pretty much the same situation as Weimar Germany circa the late 1920's, Saddam figured "I invaded Iran and they were okay with it, why not a little country like Kuwait??" And all the ethnic cleansing he carried out domestically? He figured since none of the big boys said a peep during his war with Iran no one would care now anyway.

He even arranged for a face to face with U.S diplomats to make sure that we would be okay with him invading Kuwait (in much the same fashion as Israel needs to get a green light from the U.S before partaking of any major military action, as we see evident now with President Bush's consolation gift to Israel as he couldn't greenlight the carpet bombing of Iran they were just itching to carry out) Saddam genuinely believed the response the U.S diplomats gave him was a green light to go ahead and invade Kuwait. When he told them what he was planning, they never told him not to do it but instead gave a rather aloof answer that they were committed to maintaining good ties with Iraq and were committed to peace in the region. Saddam figured "there'll be plenty of peace in the region after I take Kuwait!" and then hung himself with the rope he was handed.

The truth is, as is so often found in so many instances, there are no "good guys" and "bad guys", but only pawns who dance to the tune of a puppet master. Once Saddam had outlived his usefulness to the U.S, and had failed in their desired objectives at that, it was time for him to go.

What we see unfolding in Gaza now is more of the same... another calculated move to obtain a political goal (to replace Hamas with Fatah is the goal this time) disguised in the cloak of over-simplified "good guys battling the evil terrorists" mantra. The reality is that a lot of innocent people are getting caught in the cross fire, much of it is senseless and pointless, and yet in order for it to happen ALL of the civillian casualties must be blamed on the evildoers and be justified as such.

But at the end of the day, the families of those murdered will remember that it was Israeli bombs that killed their loved ones, not Hamas (who they elected into power) using them as human shields.

But this can never be part of the discussion. In order for these campaigns to be waged, the discussion must always be the myth of pure good (who can do no wrong) battling pure evil. Very rarely does this ever actually happen. Once you strip away the jingoism and myth of the "good fight", you come to the reality of countless lives shattered over a political goal, in this case much of it documented here-

http://gazaeng.blogspot.com/

Before I respond to this, let's make it very clear that I'm not defending Hamas in any way. With that said, you're making the whole affair sound very one sided. What actually happened is that after the election...which Hamas won...the outcome was unacceptable to Fatah (and Israel), so a power struggle ensued. There were deaths and murders on both sides, much the same as happens in a gang war. Fatah got caught with their pants down and took a licking, Hamas turned out to be far stronger and carried more popular support than Fatah originally thought.

Now, we are witnessing the campaign to restore Fatah to power, which is also consequently inflicting punishment on the people of Gaza for siding with Hamas...considering that about half of all the casualties inflicted since the IDF put boots on the ground in Gaza are civillians....

I assume you have already concluded that Israel _cannot_ be a good guy?

Again the lie.  I wish you liberals would get your facts straight.  the Old soviet Union provided him with weapons, the west only provided him with Intel.  Please dont propigate a lie and think that repeating it often enough will validate it.

The weirdest thing is that while the EU now tries to save Hamas from defeat, Egypt has been standing firmly behind Israel.

It goes without saying that the EU doesn't really care about civilians. If it did, France and Germany wouldn't have sold weapons to Saddam Hussein and would have been just as active diplomatically to stop the Sudanese government from killing hudreds of thousands of Darfurians as it is now trying to stop Israel from killing Hamas terrorists.

You know, I don't really care about "good" or "evil".

I have learned from liberals that it is "evil" for Jews not to submit to rocket fire. But "good" and "evil" are outdated concepts.

It is time liberals wake up and realise that the world has changed from "murdering Jewish children is good" or "murdering Jewish children is evil" to "murder Jewish kids and you will die".

It doesn't matter if firing rockets into Jewish schools is "good" or "evil". It doesn't matter if shooting back until it stops is "good" or "evil". All that matters is that IF it happens, there WILL be a response.

We can ignore the morality of it completely if you like.

If the world cannot accept that murdering Jews is "evil", we might at least get the world to accept that murdering Jews now has consequences.

Anyway, you can now stop pretending that "pure good" has anything to do with the discussion. The discussion is now officially about only the consequences of murdering Jews and not the morality of it.

Leauki said-

Twenty-four U.S. firms were involved in exporting arms and materials to Baghdad.^[6]

Donald Riegle, Chairman of the Senate committee that authored the aforementioned Riegle Report, said,

UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs. ... The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control sent Iraq 14 agents "with biological warfare significance," according to Riegle's investigators.^[22]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war

Oh yeah, and the U.S also sent 70 shipments of anthrax to Iraq too.

The media are now reporting Hamas has declared that Israel has legitimized killing Jewish children anywhere in the world.  And they are reporting it as if that's OK.  No condemnation of the statement.

It's inconceivable, but it appears like the liberals posting here, despite their obvious superior knowledge of these things, have been wrong about military strikes not working against terrorist groups.

Hizbullah is apparently under orders not to help Hamas because Lebanon fears an Israeli response.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053014.html\

Two wrongs don't make a right. Conducting a military operation in this manner-

http://www.btselem.org/English/Press_Releases/20090106.asp

Brings you down the same level as your enemy. Additionaly, and this is no excuse or justification, the vast majority of the munitions fired by Hamas are unguided homemade rockets with a handful of low grade soviet munitions. Meanwhile, Israel has 1000 and 2000 pound guided munitions, helicopter gunships, mobile artillery, merkaba (merkava?) tanks, full control of the skies, massive surveillance apparatus and depleted uranium rounds. In short, the IDF has a much more powerful force at it's disposal, and therefore much more responsibility in choosing how that force is applied.

The current manner in which they've chosen to apply that force is the worst possible, and using the argument that "since they blow up our schools we can do the same to them!" means that during WW2 the Allies would have been equally justified in taking German prisoners (civillians) and sending them to death camps. But they didn't, because they were better than their enemies.

So the same applies to Israel, but to imply that there's any serious comparison between Hamas and the IDF in terms of their capabilities is laughable at best. Hamas is some guys with small arms and largely innefective short range, indirect fire weapons with little to no guidance. Israel has one of the best military apparatus on the planet, with the full support and backing of the U.S and yet they've argued that it's necessary to bring this massive hammer down to crush a flea, which of course will do more dammage to the surrounding area than the flea. This will ensure that they'll have plenty of enemies down the road, as the survivors will be embittered towards them. And so it goes.

Now the aerial munitions dropped by Israel are deliberately targeted. That means that when a hospital or school is hit, specifically two schools being used as marked U.N shelters for noncombatants, someone in the IDF made the conscious decision to drop bombs on it.

Now, does this mean that the IDF are deliberately targeting civillian structures for some evil reason? I don't think so. If anything, and going in conjunction with the fact that 4 IDF soldiers have been killed in the last little while by friendly fire, this is indicative of another issue;

Contrary to all the spin, clearly Gaza has become a free fire zone for the IDF, and they've brought a lot of firepower to bear on it. This is similar to what happened in the second American attack on Fallujah, when the whole area was essentially a free fire zone and they turned one of the local stadiums into a mass morgue. Same thing happening here, on a possibly larger scale.

After GW1 almost all of what was left was destroyed... hence why so little "WMD's" were found in Iraq when they invaded in GW2.

After looking over my post. I am kind of ashamed at how bad it is since it is my native tongue.  I meant living in Sixth, after leaving and not leaving. For the fourth sentence I meant now before I go on.

Please spare some forgiveness. It is hard to type one language when you have people talking to you in a different one (especially if you know the other language).  Now if you didn't know the language then it wouldn't be a problem.

People weren't stirred about this until Israel fought back.  Now they want accountability on the Israeli side but no accountability from chamas.

I abhor this war but I see Israel left with the option to go after the one's attacking their children. 

You spoke too early.

Turns out the school was used by Hamas terrorists and they shot from it. That's a war crime, but unless we can prove that Hamas are Jewish I don't think that will ever come up.