Of course all this is true. However, if you cannot converse with a nation, and that nation is a proven threat to its neighbors, then what else is there to do? Yes, Iraq has had its sovereignty violated, but not without provoking such a response.  And do I think bombing the hell out of Baghdad is a good idea? No. As for civilian air radars being bombed, if a peaceful tool is used in a military way, lo and behold, it becomes a military target.  Go look up the Israeli losses in Lebanon in the early 80s and you will see that most of them are attributed to the militias they were fighting hiding behind the local civilians and using them as human shields.  I suspect any invasion we would have in Iraq would result in the same thing.  We could firebomb entire city blocks but we likely won't.  No, in order not to be the "bad guys" more than anyone else, we'll let Iraqi troops move up behind columns of women and children trying to get out of the way and let the losses pile up.  Yeah, that sounds real nasty situation and I would not like to see it happen. Point is, a pack of rich Saudi kids rammed planes into a couple of our buildings.  Rich educated kids who couldn't find decent jobs and became disaffected.  If there were a bunch of poor Palestinian and Iraqi punks on those planes we could have a different discussion.  I would refer you to this article which weighs a lot of the points we are discussing here.