The best summary of a case against war was made by the former US President, Jimmy Carter, when he accepted the Nobel peace prize. He stated: "Sometimes war is the lesser of two evils, but war is still always evil." That is a good starting point. In our natural opposition to military conflict we can sometimes become so blind that we fail to see the wood for the trees. We are currently in danger of allowing ourselves to believe the conflict over Iraq is little more than a macho trip by President Bush or some sort of American bid to secure additional oil resources. This view is both wrong and dangerous. There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Iraq, or between the elected President Bush – unsatisfactory as his electoral success may have been – and the mercilessly savage dictator, Saddam Hussein. We should not speak of both in the same breath.