Okay, I still don't want to talk about Iraq. I will, however, talk about people talking about Iraq. I got a copy of Democratic Senator Robert Byrd's comments lambasting the Bush administration for their actions and plans for action, and he made some really good points. One part of this whole thing I hadn't really paid much attention to is the precedent of a preemptive war. Of course, anyone can riff on worst-case scenarios, so I don't necessarily take quite so alarmist of a stance. And yet, definitely food for thought.

Then there were a couple of op-ed pieces in the New York Times. Yesterday (I think it was Tom Friedman), it was the same point I've been arriving at in my own ruminations. There is a compelling case for military action against Iraq, only the Bushies are entirely too bone-headed to actually put it together. This is what inflames international opinion against us, along with the blind loyalty of some to what the administration is saying, when they're not saying anything. Desperately clinging to the Iraq-al Queda connection being the most obvious example. And today, Paul Krugman paints an awfully disturbing picture of post-war Iraq, using the empty promises to Afghanistan and U.S. rescue workers as precedent.

As with the Byrd tirade, you have to take anything and everything, pro and con, with huge grains of salt, because it's always in someone's interest to paint either the best possible or worst possible outcome. The downside being that we, as a people, seem to be aligning more and more with these extreme positions than trying to forge a pragmatic middle ground, and as a result, I fear that we're going to be wholly unprepared when things actually happen away from those particular endpoints. Hopefully, I'm just projecting based on the sensationalism of the press and the politicians, but part of me really believes that neither "side" of the "debate" really has the slightest idea of what they're really advocating.