QUITEFRANKLYsfs:
"Ask the average person around here who the kurds are? or how many people saddam killed? etc etc.. no answer"
Well, here you are a couple of answers.
The kurds are an Indo-European ethnic group which dwells Iran, Irak, Turkey and (partially) Syria. They have been heavily opressed and killed in all these countries for many years. Do you know what does that mean?
Turkey, a member of NATO, and one of the closest American allies in the area, has driven a true GENOCIDE on Kurds (including gassings). And no one cares, no "preentive strike" against Turkey.
Now the invaders are looking for support on Kurdish local warlords (should we suppose that these leaders are better than Saddam? Why?) just like they leaned on the Kosovo guerrilla (which only one year before was regarded as a "terrorist group"). In Kosovo, the American invasion lead to the ethnic cleaning of the Serbian minority. Good!
The massacre of Halabja (when "Saddam gassed his own people") was only one more episode in a terrible war, the Iran-Irak one. Now it is said that IRANIS did it. Interesting...
How many people Saddam killed? That is the wrong question. Saddam was only one more of the people involved. Kissinger, for example, said "let`s hope this war (Iran-Irak) lasts as much as possible, and be as devastating and bloody as we desire". Rumsfeld went to Irak in 1983 and negociated the sell of weapons to the Iraki regime.
See what I mean? Everybody is guilty.
In any case, I am afraid Saddam didn`t kill as many people as they have died during the last twelve years of blockade and bombings. The child mortality rate multiplied THREE TIMES in that time, some 700 000 children died.
Irak, in 1982, was a developed country, with European-like child mortality rates, no illiteracy, free education (including university) and so on...they achieved all this by nationalizing the oil. This was totally unacceptable for the West, of course. The worst crime of Saddam it was to give Irak the chance to become an Arab world power, just like they were in the tenth century. Unacceptable.
You have asked if we knew who the Kurds are. Now let me ask you, have you ever heard of CHRISTIANS? They are a religious minority, heavily opressed in all those "friendly Arab regimes" like Saudi Arabia. In Pakistan they are simply slaying Christians systematically.
When will the Christian right in America start to whine for their brothers in religion, just like they do for Kurds? Mmm...I am afraid they don`t give a damn.
And well...where are those chemical weapons? When will the Irakis start to use them against the invasion? Where are those famous "factories" hidden under sand bags? (God, what a stupid tale). Maybe this war was started for NOTHING, after all.

"Preentive war is an Adolf Hitler invention, honestly I wouldn`t take seriously anyone who ever proposed such a thing" Dwight Eisenhower, 1953 (from the Falsano reply to the American ambassador in Uruguay, http://www.diariolarepublica.com/2003/3marzo/especiales/separata_20030330.htm )
Very flattered, thijs. I liked your posts too.

Latest news: seven more civilians (three of them being children) killed in a checkpoint.