Well - I never thought I would do it but I'm here agreeing with Opti.
The world doesn't hate the US - we don't consider you guys our enemy - we just don't want to be involved in a personal vendetta between the Bush family and Saddam.
Nearly everyone outside the US can see that this looming war is only going to increase the problems in the middle east, not reduce them. It doesn't matter what Saddam has done to his own people, it doesn't matter what weapons he has and what he can do to his Arab neighbours. The fact is that the US has lost the PR campaign before it even starts and no amount of military muscle is going to win the war - it might win a few battles but the war is never going to end once the bugles sound the advance.
Now if PR campaigns just meant a few lost sales that wouldn't be a problem but what that war will do is unleash millions of fanatical Muslims who don't care about right and wrong - all they will care about is revenge and I doubt that anyone wants what happens on an almost daily basis in Israel to happen on the streets of every western city in the world but the potential is there for just that. These fanatics don't care about killing themselves because when they do they see themselves as going straight to paradise.
That may all sound a bit far-fetched but the potential is there and no amount of technology or security will stop it. If it could then the Israelis would not be having the problems they are now.
Someone posted earlier that everything will settle back to normal within a few years and used the example of post WWII Germany.
I don't buy that for one moment. Just look at the terms that Bin Laden and Saddam are using now. They are calling the western armies Crusaders. A term that goes back a thousand years and reminds the Arabs of the what the west did to them once before.
That term rekindles the fires of hatred that have never gone out in the Arab world so if the war goes ahead, regardless of the immediate outcome this will not go away in 10, 20 or even 50 years.
The fact is guys, the world doesn't want it when there are other options that can be used to keep Saddam isolated and just because the world is prepared to stand up and say 'no' to dubyah doesn't mean that we're soft, of socialist or scared - it just means that we see things differently to some silly little wart who can't concentrate on anything for any longer and a television advertisment.
If he could you guys would still be in Afghanistan finishing the job George started there.
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