Just removing Saddam doesn't remove his grip on the people there... the top leaders in the country are as crazy as he is (have you listened to the 'minister of information'?). Saddam isn't the one pulling the trigger, he has many homicidal thugs doing it for him. I would imagine when Rumsfeld says our mission is to remove Saddam, our mission is to remove Saddam's influence, including his henchmen/sons/etc. Allowing them to 'promise to go away and not be bad people' anymore is to ignore the tragedy of Saddam's reign of terror since 1978, still, they were given that opportunity on many occasions and declined.
Just removing the millions of people from Iraq who are subject to his violence is just a little short-sighted, don't you think? What about their rights as citizens of the country to live there? Yes, 'shooting your way through' iraq may seem simplistic, but I challenge you to find any war between 2 countries where the number of civilians killed was less than the number of civilians killed by the iraqi govt. in the previous year. >50,000 citizens just disappear on a yearly basis there... they were 'relocated' to the afterlife.
You remember the guy who tried to force his way into a UN inspector's vehicle?
He's gone.
Here's an example of more '
relocations':
[]
Amnesty International has on numerous occasions over the years expressed its concern at the practice of "disappearances" by the Iraqi authorities. Cases have been documented in several reports [2]. The organization has obtained and continues to receive the names of thousands of victims whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown. As an example, according to some estimates over 100,000 Kurdish civilians "disappeared" in 1988 alone, in a space of three to four months, in the so-called Operation Anfal when the Iraqi Government implemented a program of destruction of villages and towns all over Iraqi Kurdistan, ostensibly in order to resettle the inhabitants in areas which offered improved conditions. An estimated 4,000 villages and towns were destroyed and razed to the ground and decrees were issued giving military and security personnel the authority to execute any persons attempting to return to their homes. Some Kurdish estimates put the figure at 150,000 to 180,000 "disappeared" victims. Amnesty International has the names of about 17,000 people who "disappeared" during that time.
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There's quite a bit more in that article, they list hundreds of thousands of people 'relocated' over the last 20 years...
