It's lost down the memory hole of history for most Americans, but 12 years ago this month, Iraq invaded Kuwait (with, by reputable accounts, tacit U.S. blessings) -- and for the next six months, there was vigorous public debate over whether the United States should wage war on Iraq. The stated purpose of such a war, and a perfectly laudable goal, was to deliver Kuwait out of the clutches of a ruthless mass murderer (Saddam Hussein) and return it to the control of the garden variety despotic oil monarchy that runs the Kuwait oil franchise for the Americans.

Twelve years ago, that was a controversial proposition. A resolution supporting an allied -- not United States -- invasion barely passed Congress, with fierce Democratic opposition and over 200 "no" votes in the House. Protesters marched and rallied and held candles and waved banners and occupied buildings in cities and on campuses across the country. Americans of every stripe debated the war in bars and offices and schools and on the TV and radio and over the dinner table. There was debate. Lots of it. Before the fighting started, and afterwards, too. Ah, for the old days.

A couple weeks ago, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings of George Junior's intent to invade Iraq again. Just like Daddy. Unlike 12 years ago, there is no compelling invasion of Kuwait (or fake incubator deaths) to spur global outrage (and alarm over oil supply). There is, in fact, no compelling reason of any sort to go to war against Iraq. The only recent development cited by the Bush Administration is the claim that Iraq is developing new "weapons of mass destruction." That claim that has consistently been considered patently absurd by the rest of the world, including a succession of United Nations officials charged with looking into such things. Several of the ones who've headed the "Food for Oil" program, or who've served as weapons inspectors in Iraq, have quit their jobs (and careers) and become full-time activists trying to counter White House propaganda (under both Clinton and Bush) and the steady, inexorable war drums of the past two years.

These experts -- folks like Scott Ritter or Denis Holliday or Hans von Sponeck, in town yesterday -- weren't invited to the Democratic-controlled Senate hearings. Nor were any prominent opponents, or even mild skeptics, of war plans. Instead, remarkably, the only opposition being offered by our pathetic excuse for an "opposition" party has been logistical -- when to invade, whether to rely first on air or ground assaults, who to replace Saddam with after we kill him.

It's been like this for over a year. And our media of record has been no better. Check out this week's succession of New York Times front page headlines. As Senate hearings opened on Monday, the Times contribution to what, 12 years ago, was a far-reaching debate on the limits of U.S. military power was this leaden gem: "U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike as Iraq Option." (The same headline could have been run on any day for the past year, and often was.)

Tuesday morning, the Times lead was: "Profound Effect on U.S. Economy Seen in a War on Iraq." By later in the day -- perhaps fearful that such a headline would remind people of their tanking 401k's and reflect badly on the war effort itself -- the White House spin machine had leaped into action, Times stenographers panting to keep up: "Rumsfeld Doubts Air Power Would Destroy Iraq's Weapons."

Rumsfeld, of course, is right; daisy cutters tend to create small rocks, not destroy them. Even a slingshot or two might survive. But the week's whole sequence of utterly representative headlines are remarkable for what they don't say. You want a "profound effect"? Forget a few cents more to fill up your SUV. consider one to two million dead, half of them kids, no safe drinking water, a generation of people destroyed. That's a "profound effect.

Instead, we've been getting lots of Pentagon and State Department and "senior official" and "White House aide" huffing and puffing about Saddam (better to attack one person than a whole country, right?). There's been no actual evidence offered that his newly rebuilt (from what?) "weapons of mass destruction" even exist -- let alone the more relevant questions of whether they'd be a threat to any neighboring countries, or even whether he'd use them. At the same time, the casual discussion of assassinating a foreign leader has ignored even the troublesome question of succession -- let alone whether the U.S. has the unilateral right to depose foreign governments. The breathtaking and seemingly universal American arrogance over this whole sad spectacle -- all done while continuing to lecture the world on America's unique virtuousness -- provides an endless variety of new answers as to why terrorists might hate us.

They might, for example, hate us because of those million Muslims dead thanks to U.S. sanctions "against Saddam."

Such numbers don't show up in the debate on whether to invade Iraq, because there has been no debate. That's the mark of a dictatorship, not a democracy, and a particularly Alice-in-Wonderland kind of place at that. The whole exercise of unilaterally invading Iraq is without point or purpose -- except to further enrich Dubya's oil buddies and to teach other wavering poor countries a lesson about disobeying Washington). If, as Madeleine Albright vouchsafed in 1996, it's worth half a million dead Iraqi children to do nothing more than wage a childlike vendetta, how many Iraqi lives are at risk now that an oil-soaked manchild, with slipping poll numbers, is in the White House?

Chances are we'll find out eventually, with far less fanfare than the six soldiers who'll die in a helicopter crash on a training exercise in Sierra Leone. (Or wherever. It's all considered American territory now.) But you can be sure such questions won't be asked in the halls of power. Nobody's invited who might ask them.

That leaves us. If our Foreign Relations Committee senators (and representatives, and reporters) are to hear any intelligent criticisms of this madness, they must come from you and I. Now. Today. Pick up the phone, pick up your pen -- for goodness sakes, type, even. Deluge our policy makers with concerns, critiques, demands. The first demand is the simplest of all: have a real discussion of the pros and cons of launching a war against Iraq.

If we are to call ourselves a democracy -- if we are, in fact, to consider ourselves any more free than the victims of America's sanctions and Saddam Hussein's wretched regime -- we would, as a society, reject this preposterous war, a pointless blank check to the Pentagon and its buddies that has been presented to us as "inevitable."

And after they politely tally your call, without benefit of any real human contact, make it impossible for such an invasion -- massacre, more accurately -- to happen without a domestic price. Organize, organize, organize.

So far, media coverage, Senate hearings, and Pentagon and White House pronouncements have all been reinforcing one well-coordinated message: the necessity of an inevitably one-sided massacre. The bipartisan enthusiasm for it all has shut out the most basic question possible: whether we should be engaging in such mass murder. As soon as one starts asking the questions, the answers become obvious. And that's why the questions are not being asked. We'll just have to ask them ourselves.