[Barry the Sprout]

You can't just proclaim that Hussein needed to be removed and that the US and UK had every right to do so without a serious rethink of foreign policy with regard to other dictators around the world. Its incredibly short sighted to view Hussein as just some unfortunate random occurrence, as opposed to 30 years of Western intervention and power-brokering. If you were sincere about helping the Iraqi's then you would be screaming blue murder about indicting the guys who supported Saddam for all those years when we were pissed off with the Iranians.

Having said all that I feel that the sanctions absolutely didn't help - you're quite right. They put back any possibility for revolution. What would have helped would have been less Western support for dictators and Isreali oppression for a very long period of time. That process, as far as I can tell, has not even started now after Sept 11th - when surely anyone could see what the consequences of it were.