With war looming on the horizon and the central question of Saddam's weapon programs and intentions before us, it's worthwhile to ask what lessons history teaches us. Two books in particular offer us important insights.

Donald Sensing notes that:

"It was Bush the Elder who first characterized Saddam Hussein as Hitlerian, back in 1990 during the build up to the Gulf War. I think that comparisons to Hitler are almost always overdrawn, and Bush's statements back then struck me as bloviation, simple metaphors made to illustrate Saddam's threat and drum up domestic support.

Lately though, I have thought that the comparison is apt in a way that Bush did not intend...."

The rest delves deeply goes into the known psychology of both men. Rev. Donald Sensing (formerly Maj. Sensing) draws heavily on Ronald Lewin's short but packed book, Hitler's Mistakes, which probes deep behind the litany of tactical and strategic blunders that Hitler made beginning in 1942. Lewin discusses in detail how Hitler's fundamental conceptual incapabilities created a system of belief and choices in the German Reich that could lead only to disaster.

Donald then draws the parallels with Saddam's Iraq, and they're well drawn. The conclusions are chilling, and he comes to an utterly firm belief that Saddam is undeterrable over the long term.

A longer and much more detailed portrait is available in a new book called The Threatening Storm, by Kenneth Pollack. Pollack was a member of U.S. President Clinton's National Security Council, and its senior Iraq expert. The book is described here by Stanley Kurtz, who says it hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. Reading his review, I can understand why.

In "Doves in Wonderland," I asked what one would have to believe, in order to reasonably argue against an invasion of Iraq. Donald Sensing's piece and Kurtz's column are vitally important pieces of information for anyone willing to honestly consider the questions I raised.

Of course, this assumes that honest consideration is currently on the antiwar Left's agenda - or ever was. A fact that even avowed leftists are now waking up to.

— Joe Katzman, Winds of Change.NET