1. When were these Kurds attacked by Saddam? When supporting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam acquired WMDs, but during the weapons inspections, no WMDs were found. "A report from U.N. weapons inspectors to be released today says they now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994, according to two U.N. diplomats who have seen the document." -- http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-03-02-un-wmd_x.htm (later US reports concurred with the UN findings. Heck, even Bush admits that his biggest failure was the "intelligence failure in Iraq -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/02/george-bush-iraq-interview )
It's still inconsequential because the WMD point was just ONE of may reasons to invade. (And note that it was the only reason that could be used at the UN because "Saddam murders his people" is not a crime according to the UN.)
2. 13 years of diplomacy? Oh yeah, that diplomacy was intended to get rid of WMDs, which was successful at doing so.
No, it wasn't. During those years Saddam refused to allow the inspections to happen and fired at US and British aircraft protecting the Kurds and Shiites.
3. So we stayed in Germany mostly because of the Cold War, not because of Nazi Germany, which I have admitted, was the reasoning for the "just war."
I guess Germany was lucky that Hitler murdered Jews and not Kurds. Or what was the reason invading Germany was "just" while invasing Iraq was "unjust"?
4. You're gonna have to give evidence for this in order for me to believe it. If by "civil war" you mean saddam's oppression, then okay, but it's clear that forces in Iraq played a definite role in creating an atmosphere for sectarian violence. A US report says "violence between Sunnis and Shias is being driven by increasing polarisation within Iraqi society, compounded by a weak government and security force." (paraphrased by http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/middle_east/6324767.stm )
I cannot give evidence and neither can you.
I can only go by what Iraqis told me and what I saw. The difference is that my opinion is based on what I saw, and your opinion is based on that I cannot convince you.
I saw that pretty much every single building in north-eastern Iraq that was older than 2003 featured bullet holes the size of soda cans. This arguably means that there was some kind of war going on, which is incidentally what the locals remember happening.
I have heard stories of Saddam's armies attacking and people fleeing to the mountains, several times. It was better after 1990, of course, but only the airspace was protected by the coalition (what you called "diplomacy"), the ground was not.
The civil war was first between Saddam and the Kurds, then between two Kurdish factions, then between both Kurdish factions and Al-Qaeda (who as you recall the media claim had no presence in Iraq, but that's not what Iraqis remember). Al-Qaeda were finally beaten near Sulimeiniya by Kurdish forces with American air support in 2003 after the invasion.
If you want evidence, I suggest you go there and ask people. Reading articles written by journalists based in the Green Zone in Baghdad, who get paid for writing certain things won't do it. Or you can safe yourself some time and believe me. But am I as trustworthy as someone who is getting paid to write what his boss wants him to write? It's your choice.
When in doubt, I always think, it's safes to support whichever side wants to get rid of the dictator with the moustache who gasses people. Life's too short to help those.
And if helping them is the only way to avoid war, as some people think, one should take a good look at the world. Maybe there are other wars one can try to stop, wars that are NOT designed to get rid of an evil dictator.
It's a happy world where US forces violently removing a fascist dictator is the worst problem one can think of! I wish I lived in that world. But I don't. So I do what I can to help Sudanese refugees (I am mentioned here, name is Andrew Brehm) and explain to people that removing Arab nationalist dictators from power is not the problem, but the solution.
I really don't know where you read that there were still WMDs. Out of curiousity, where do you get your news?
On location: http://web.mac.com/ajbrehm/Home/Blog/Entries/2008/10/9_Erbil.html
I talked to people who were attacked by Saddam's forces and who remember his WMDs. So I know they existed. Since Saddam was supposed to prove that he destroyed them and didn't, I figure they could still be somewhere. Or is that too easy?
Another possibility is that he did destroy them and lied about it in order to pretend to be strong. But in that case it's hardly George Bush's fault that the lie was told and it's an unfortunate detail, for Saddam, that America believed those Iraqi lies.
I also get some information from Kurdish separatists, but these days they don't have much to say on Iraq any more.
Some people believe that weapons just vanish. I don't. They were either destroyed or not. Saddam made sure that we never learned that they were destroyed. But it was a risk not worth taking.
Whenever you find yourself thinking something like "The fascist dictator who gasses people said he destroyed all his WMDs, why not trust him?" you should not that there is something wrong with your reasoning.