I get really fed up with the way arguments get polarised. In the Iraq thing, this means you can only be either for war (gung ho imperialistic swine) or against it (Saddam loving cheese eater).

Timothy Garton Ash wrote a good article arguing against polarisation and explaining why he's on the fence about Iraq.

It's worth pointing out, though, that the people on one side of this argument are a lot more keen to polarise than the other. According to the US government, and a lot of other pro-war folk, you're either desperate to pull the trigger now and who cares what anyone else thinks or you're 'irrelevant', 'insignificant', 'pathetic' etc. etc. etc. Bush 2 began all this with his 'if you're not with us you're against us' speech - what Chomsky described as the USA declaring war on the world.

The other thing that strikes me is that the reasons Garton Ash gives against the war are much stronger than the ones he gives for it.

B