>George W Bush is not going to use nuclear weapons on anyone

Why are you so sure? Why have them if dont intend on using them, whatever the situation?

>Nor is he going to gas any or our enemies, much less his own citizens

Maybe, but he is ready to kill many US soldiers and thousands of Iraq citizens without listening to the UN.

Don't get me wrong, Saddam Hussein is a psychopath that need to be removed from the power. But war should be used only and only when every other possibilities have been eliminated. This is not the current situation. The inspectors are doing some real progress and should be allowed more time.

There are hundreds of dictators on this planet, many of them are cruel (North Korea and Cote d'Ivoire come to mind) and many of them funds and protect terrorists groups. Are we going to declare war on each of them? Are we going to spend the entire 21th century in war? Why Iraq and not the others? (Hint: oil)

There exist some other solutions, like funding and organizing a reverse of power. But these take time and Bush is not patient. He want to solve this the old far west way, with the guns.

The entire arab region is a barrel of gun powder, a single spark and it may cause a major boom. In case you didn't know, the US is not very popular over there. Declare war against Iraq (specially without the UN consent) and I fear that things will deteriorate. I'm sure that there will be suddenly a lot more kamikaze ready to die to fight the US.

Like I said above, oil is one of the major reason Bush want to go to war against Iraq, despite what some of the participants in this thread thinks. China is in a major economic boom and will need a lot more fossile energy to continue it's growth. Iraq is an allied of China. By controlling Iraq oil, the US will better control the economic growth of China to better suit it's own agenda.

BTW, one of your past president have joined his voice against war on Iraq. It's the Peace Nobel winner of this year, Jimmy Carter.