What's gibberish is this childish and intrinsically meaningless "war for oil" line that I'd thought people on your side had finally gotten tired of.
I suppose you would still consider reporting on such abuses to be "emotional gibberish" if it was your parent, child, or sibling being unearthed from the mass grave, or your baby who was frozen after its death so it could be put on propaganda display on some later date, or if you yourself were about to be put feet first into an industrial shredder?
My reason for introducing the two articles was not chiefly for the sake of justifying the war, but rather to give one response to Alfonso's ludicrous notion that Saddam's regime was trustworthy - and his underlying assumption that leaving it in power would have been some costless and morally superior policy. The context was obvious. If you weren't so eager to spray your lefty cliches, you'd have noticed.
I've gone into the multiple justifications for the war many times on other threads on ET. If you had been paying attention, you also could have heard them enunciated by the Bush Administration. They include many of the reasons that led President Clinton to back and sign the Iraqi Relations Act in 1998, officially making Iraq regime change the bi-partisan policy of this country.
However, I do consider the evils of Iraq's regime and the suffering of the Iraqi people to be among the arguments for the war. In the case of Iraq we had special responsibility for this situation - not because, as many on war movement inaccurately and pointlessly claim, the US was ever a major supporter of Saddam's - but because we participated in the post-Gulf War sanctions program, and turned away both when people we had encouraged rose up against Saddam, and also when Saddam's government flagrantly violated the ceasefire agreements that ended the Gulf War.
As for the larger point, when human rights abuses reach genocidal proportions, I do believe there's an argument for intervention. Of course, the interventions have to be practicable - they have to have some prospect of durably altering the situation for the better- and there's a risk of exhaustion. Unfortunately, most countries in the world community are incapable of providing substantial assistance.
Once upon a time, the left looked favorably on the end of tyranny, and many of its members would have celebrated the fall of a Saddam Hussein almost regardless of how it was brought about.
maybe. but i hope not.