Dear President Madame Clinton (from Saddam Hussein):

[vsp]

Three lines of thought:

1) Hussein is an asset to nobody's neighborhood, and the world (and Iraq) would be improved if Hussein stepped down or was otherwise replaced by a more democratic form of government.

2) The United States has neither the right nor the mandate to engage in military activities in other sovereign nations at will, to dictate who may lead or govern other nations, or to declare itself justified in attacking any nation that opposes us or seeks to build up its military to a level approaching our own.

3) "I thought he might want to hit me someday, so I hit him back first" is a system of conflict resolution that gets five-year-olds into trouble, much less adults who should know better.

Many people are shocked that these three concepts are NOT contradictory, and that both can exist nicely within a very rational worldview.