In article , Frank writes:

But Saddam was able to conceal this exact sort of thing from the world.
Thousands upon thousands of people were rounded up and executed after the
1991 war. Journalists were everywhere, and some of them even reported (or
at least tried to report) what was going on. The news was ignored by the
rest of the world.

Shame on anyone, anywhere for ignoring any such atrocities.


OK, so we don't ignore it. Then what, write a strongly worded letter to "The
Times"?

Or send in troops to take out the monster?

Because monsters like Saddam are not going to stop killing their opponents, and
their relatives and aquaintences, unless they believe that someone will get up
on their hind legs and punish them.

We may not have known the number of people he killed, but we, and the UN, knew
it was in the tens of thousands, and neither the UN, nor his Moslem neighbors
did a damned thing about it until the Cop on the Corner showed up.


I said it badly but I'm talking about going forward. Get the internet into
the hands of the people. While there are certainly fine journalists out
there, the news organizations that we rely on for delivery are failing
miserably and can no longer be trusted to fulfil their role.

I agree that the internet is a great tool for getting inforamtion around the
barriers set up to contain it, but you can't even change my behavior by posting
something critical to usenet, much less the Saddams and Pol Pots of the world.
Sooner or later, you need the presence, or the credible threat, of troops on
the ground to effect that change.

It's also a way for us to demonstrate to the world that we really mean it
when we talk about free speech. We in America know open dialog is crucial
to democracy so exporting it can only help us in the long run.


Well, exporting the rule of law in the form of a representative republic would
be a good thing, but I would not inflict democracy on even our worst enemies.

Don

--
Wm. Donald (Don) Tabor Jr., DDS
PP-ASEL
Chesapeake, VA - CPK, PVG