>Agreed. of course Versailles was insulting and very severe on Germany, which is another lesson we need to learn. German people responded more eagerly to the Nazi call because of what had gone before.

Agreed, but the terms of the cease fire in 1991 and the U.N. Resolutions were not anywhere near as severe at the Treaty of Versailles. He was asked to give up his weapons of mass destruction. He has not. 12 years is enough.

>Presumably we also agree that SH is not the most prepared country in the world for war in 2003, so this cannot be applied to SH.

Not being the most prepared does not mean he is still not a serious threat. You don't need a large army to do severe damage. Look at Al Qaeda. Were they the most prepared country in the world? No, not by far. Yet they still did serious damage and continue to be a severe threat, as Saddam does.

>JR>Churchill opposed Chamberlain's actions as "complete surrender . . . to the Nazi threat of force". IOW the Nazis were not under threat of force, they were the ones doing the threatening. Chamberlain made a mistake caving in to the threats.
>CM>And why were the Nazis doing the threatening? Because nobody made them abide buy the treaty they signed.
>
>Agreed. Presumably we also agree that SH is not threatening to invade other states in 2003, so this cannot be applied to SH.

Hitler had not invaded any states in 1935. Are you saying that he wasn't a threat then, then suddenly became one overnight when he reoccupied the Rhineland? No, it didn't happen overnight.

>JR>Nobody, not even Churchill, proposed a pre-emptive strike on Germany. It was the other way around; the Nazis demanded and received concessions (including the Czech Sudetenland) as a condition for only occupying Austria.
>CM>And what does that teach us? That appeasement does more harm than good.
>
>Agreed. Presumably we also agree that SH is not demanding concessions, so this cannot be applied to SH.

Saddam is not abiding by the cease fire he agreed to nor the U.N. Resolutions.

>CM>You are making my points for me. 12 years of ignoring 17 U.N. Resolutions has made Saddam confident. Starting with U.N. Resolution 687 in 1991, which banned him from having weapons of mass destruction. He has by all accounts continued to develop these weapons, and the world has done nothing.
>
>??!! Having agreed that we cannot apply these points re Appeasement to SH, you go ahead and do it.

We will.

>CM>Where did I say I was blaming the French?
>
>Surely you jest.

I never said anything about blaming the French for allowing the Germans to build up their military pre-World War II. That was a problem shared by the world.

>CM>>Where did you get your information that New Zealand declared war first.
>
>Hint: NZ is 12 hours ahead of the UK. We all declared war at the same time and date.

Funny.

>CM>We have learned from history and are not going to appease a dictator. If France chooses to repeat that mistake, that's their problem.
>
>I'm sure you aren't blaming France for anything there... but how can you "appease" somebody who is confined in his own borders, gets bombed with impunity, is forced to disarm by foreign inspectors picking over his country?

By allowing him to ignore all those U.N. Resolutions banning weapons of mass destruction, in the same way that Germany was allowed to ignore restrictions on its military. We are not going to repeat the same mistake.