Work tomorrow, don't want to go. I guess I should console myself with the fact that I'll get to see everyone, 'cause I miss them a bit.

Everyone and their dog is crapping on about Iraq. The world was boring enough anyway, and now the only entertainment is the war.

So I've been doing an awful lot of reading. I finished The Willow Tree (Hubert Selby Jr.), and it's to the same high standard as his other novels. I had a bit of cry at various stages, and towards the end I stayed up to see what happened.

I'm a contrary soul, so I'm going to take the opposite view of the war to that of my peers. I think the USA has honourable intentions, and that ultimately the outcome for Iraq will be a positive one. Everyone is so fixated on the US (while berating the US for being self-obsessed), and no-one is talking about Iraq. Also, people seem to forget that the USA is filled with people, same as us, and rants away without a whole lot of concern for the effect on any ordinary USians who might be left thinking it's getting a bit personal.

Anyway. No-one's going to know about weapons of mass destruction until the US finds them - or doesn't. Right now there isn't much point blustering about them... although, I haven't been watching the news, so maybe they have found some. That aside, everything I see (including stuff I find myself, outside the US media) about Saddam leads me to conclude that the man's a freaking nut, and shouldn't be in charge of a country.

How many people upset with George Bush have really looked into what life in Iraq is like? Not life right now - but ordinary day-to-day life. Life isn't good if you're in the wrong ethnic bracket. Life isn't too good if you're a woman. Literacy is low, but not appalling. No civil rights as we understand them, but Islamic Law would give them something. They have elections every seven years, and the last one they could pick Saddam... or Saddam. Saddam has to approve any political activity, so mayhap that explains the lack of an opposition. Inflation is at 60%, which suggests they're fucked, financially.

Speak to people from Iraq - but now somewhere else - and they'll say that it's a terrible, frightening place to live. People sometimes get dragged out of their house and bundled into government cars. They come back dead. The government tortures people, they torture people's families and make them watch. 'Ethnic cleansing' happens there. People's homes and possessions are confiscated. Rape is common. People are beheaded in public for saying the wrong things. They poison them, they break their wive's bones. People aren't allowed to travel freely around the country, there are checkpoints everywhere. Every day, Saddam gives speeches on the radio and TV, and sometimes they go for hours. People are malnourished, and get diseases we just don't get anymore in the first world.

You can go on and on and on about the US, and the UN, and the morals of invading a country, and you can remind me about the blockade as it relates to the Iraqis quality of life. These all valid, but overdone. You could give oil a go... but the US has been getting oil from Iraq all through this, and I don't think oil's the issue it's hyped as. Talk to former Iraqi people, and they'll remind you that Saddam is a crazy man. In the real world, what good is the UN when a crazy man is running the country, and the country has no way to get rid of him?

If you want to get brutal about it - innocent people are being killed in Iraq all the time. And they're being tortured and generally oppressed. I think when you weigh that in, the US doesn't look so bad, and you can start to wonder about whether the ends justifies the means.

[Music: Front Line Assembly - Comatose (Grisha)]
[Mood: depressed]