I think its hard to compare Saddam to Hitler. However, when Hitler was in power, not even the United States knew how bad he was until we arrived there and saw the concentration camps. The rest of the world did not know either. The German people even loved him at the time and did not know how evil he was.

Does that mean we should stand back and wait and see if Saddam is that bad? I would say the possibility of having someone like that on earth again justifies action.

We do know he has murdered his own people. While the numbers he killed rank nowhere near what Hitler did, does the number of people killed matter?

It has been a great debate as to the United States’ real reason for wanting to go into Iraq. I have heard for oil. I think that is naive. Of course, any time you deal with a Middle Eastern country, oil is going to be part of it. And yes, if the United States goes in, we only stand to gain economically.

But, there is also the idea of wanting to prevent Saddam from giving terrorist organizations weapons of mass destruction. He does have a history of funding and training terrorists.

There is also the idea of preventing him from killing his own people again. There are many other reasons for action, which I am not going to list to keep this as short as I can.

I guess what I am trying to say is that the situation is so dynamic that it is very difficult for all of us to understand fully because none of us have all of the facts. We only know what the press tells us. And if you have watched different news channels reporting the same things, you know they sometimes tell slightly different stories, depending on what ideas they support.

Shawn Beard