Out of the millions of people who are protesting against a war this weekend, very few (if any) are protesting on behalf of Hussein.

And some protested Iraq's human rights record back in the 80s when the US government was supporting Hussein during the war against Iran (see this editorial and aricle for Rumsfeld's role during the Reagan-Bush administration).

Agreed. To say that protesters are supporting Hussein is a bit short-sighted.

This ariticle: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=578&e=1&cid=578&u=/nm/20030215/ts_nm/iraq_protests_dc

says that they were carrying pictures of Saddam in Beirut.

As Carl Hiaasen noted in his column a couple of weeks ago (also, here is a working link for the editorial above):

...not a living soul outside Iraq has anything good to say about Saddam. He is indisputably a monster and a megalomaniac, but among military dictators those traits are hardly unique. Similar denunciations once rang out made against Moammar Gadhafi -- ''the mad dog of the Middle East,'' Ronald Reagan called him. Today the Libyan leader is very much alive, still in power and reportedly letting U.S. agents peek at his files on al Qaeda.

Here's the guy who harbored and trained some of the world's most ruthless terrorist groups in the 1980s; who authorized and likely financed the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Yet recently a kinder, gentler Gadhafi told the New York Times: ``It is no longer acceptable or reasonable to say that the Jews should be thrown into the sea.''

There you are -- a changed man.

Yeah, right.

Gadhafi is among several credentialed America-haters who are seldom mentioned by the White House these days. Instead we are told to save our fear and loathing for Saddam, who hasn't yet blown up any U.S. airliners or dispatched suicide terrorists to our shores.

That the Iraqi president nurtures even darker ambitions is the core of the president's argument, now expanded to intimate secret cooperation between Saddam's regime and certain al Qaeda operatives.

Proof is what the world community awaits, and so does much of the American public.

Everybody already knows Saddam is a butcher; the horrors he has perpetrated on his own people have been gruesomely documented.

Everybody also knows, however, that the United States has in the past overlooked savage human-rights violations and even genocide when it suited our political or economic interests.

While the Iraqi people undoubtedly would be better off if their supreme commander were blown to bits, the same is true in various other countries. If the administration's mission is to rid the planet of all sadistic tyrants, we will never run out of wars to start.

If the goal is simply to make an example of Saddam, it wouldn't appear that either North Korea or Iran are shaking in their boots.

According to polls, most Americans rank our enemies based on the proven threat to domestic security. That's why there's far more enthusiasm for finding Osama bin Laden than there is for occupying Iraq...

(I wrote a review - scroll down a bit - of his first collection of columns).

I'm shocked, shocked that some people were carrying photos of Hussein in Beirut and Amman.

There might even be a few idiots in Europe or the US who support him, millions of the protestors don't.

There are legit reasons to both support and oppose a war against Iraq, but saying those who demonstrate against a war do so on "behalf of Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship" is getting really tired.

It has been stipulated that he is a brutal dictator who allows no dissent and has murdered as Blair points out more than 500,000 people (though most of those were Iranians when the US supported him).

What we differ on is if he is still a enough of threat while there is an inspection regime in Iraq to justify a costly war which will kill many people.

That is the crux of the matter, isn't it? Your argument is reasonable and persuasive, I just see military action as the only possible way to achieve our agreed upon goals. Many people are already dying.