Feb 26th, 2003:
MAHER: ... I just don't think this is the right war.
KING: Why not?
MAHER: Well, as I said on my show the other night, I think you have to buy three things to buy this war. One, that Saddam Hussein has bad weapons, and I do say -- I agree, he has chemicals. I bet you he has chems and nukes -- and bios. I don't think he has nukes.
But the other two things you have to buy to buy the war are -- is that he's in league with bin Laden. Let's not forget that's who we're really after, is the people who attacked us.
KING: Bin Laden. Whatever happened to him?
MAHER: Exactly. Whatever happened to bin Laden? This looks to me, and it looks to a lot of the world, like we couldn't get bin Laden. We lost our keys in the garage, but we're look for them in the living room because there's better light.
Or to make another analogy, it's like we're the big kid on the block and this little kid Osama came by and threw a rock through our window. So we went over to his house and we kicked his butt in Afghanistan, and on the way home, we kicked his cousin's butt for no reason.
KING: So there's no logic. And what's the third thing?
MAHER: The third thing is that you have to buy that he not only has these weapons, but that we have to preemptively take the weapons away from him.
KING: For the first time in our history, I think.
MAHER: First time, this is a very new doctrine. And I agree with the doctrine if it's applied to the people who attacked us. That is not Saddam Hussein.
This linking of him with al Qaeda and this idea that he is about to strike, that his claws were up there -- I just don't buy that.
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0302/26/lkl.00.htmlMarch 6th, 2003:
The signatories include Professor Richard Dawkins, who said on signing the statement: "The first Gulf War was provoked by a specific aggressive act by Iraq. Not to have retaliated in Kuwait could legitimately have been compared to Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler at Munich. Nothing of the kind applies to the present proposal for war. The timing gives the game away. It comes from America, not Iraq."
He went on: "Bush is the aggressor. Britain has no business following the lead of this unelected bully. Regime change in Iraq would be nice for Iraqis. Regime change in Washington would do more good to the world in the long run."
In a letter to the Guardian today, Professor Dawkins made a further attack on the American president, saying his comparison to Winston Churchill was "vain".
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/mar/06/highereducation.uk
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