Most of the Iraqis were brought from the heavily Arab city of Dearborn, Mich., by the rabidly right-wing Free Republic Foundation. The Freepers, as they like to call themselves, and their supporters were certainly deserving of jeers -- they only needed to open their mouths to discredit themselves. Adam Ramey, the buzz-cut and be-suited vice chair of Young Americans for Freedom, started frothing when a few peaceniks wandered into his orbit, bellowing, "This is communism! This is violence! USA! USA! SWIM TO CUBA! SWIM TO CUBA!"

However, the 20 or 30 Iraqis in attendance can't be dismissed as easily. There's no reason to disbelieve the stories they told -- of fathers and brothers executed by Saddam, uncles disappeared into the country's gulag and never heard from again. Such tales are given credence by any human rights group. Nearly every Iraqi there had lost a relative to the regime, and there was a devastating intensity in their voices when they cried, "People yes, Saddam no! He's a murderer, he must go!"

Dressed in a long gray robe and white turban, Imam Husham Al-Husainy seemed convinced that if the antiwar protesters knew what Saddam had done, they'd support his removal. Al-Husainy is no right-wing ideologue -- earlier this year in Michigan, he was charged with protesting without a permit for participating in a pro-Palestinian rally. He single-handedly runs Dearborn's Karbalaa Islamic Education Center, which helps Arab refugees, and he's trying to build a homeless shelter.

Saturday morning, before the two sides were separated by a line of riot police, he would approach anyone from the peace camp who wandered over, offering to tell them about life in Iraq. "They are misguided. They need to know more, they need to talk to Iraqis," he said. "We are the people who suffer. Whoever is quiet about the crimes of Saddam is sharing Saddam's crimes."

Unfortunately, the antiwar protesters had nothing at all to say about the crimes of Saddam. Operating with a political template borrowed from Vietnam, this peace movement seemed unprepared to reckon with the dictator's evil, even when its victims were staring them in the face. Speakers including Susan Sarandon, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton offered stirring indictments of the Bush administration. They made frequent references to Martin Luther King and led the crowd in chants of "Free Mumia!" A girl from Hunter College quoted Che Guevara, saying, "The bullets, what can the bullets do to me if my destiny is to die by drowning?" Someone played a taped message from Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown), who is in prison for murdering a policeman who was trying to arrest him for theft.

What was missing was any acknowledgment that opposing a war with Iraq means not removing a tyrant from power purely because the alternative could be worse.

There are good reasons to fight Bush's policies. The Pentagon hawks are driven by a domino theory that assumes democracy in Iraq will be easily achieved and will spur liberalization throughout the region. That's a scenario many critics say ignores the depth of anti-Americanism in the world and the rage that a prolonged American occupation of Iraq would likely engender. Experts such as Sandra Mackey, author of "The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein," worry that in the power vacuum following regime change, the country could erupt in a bloody sectarian conflagration. Meanwhile, the whole adventure is likely to, as Mackey says, "light a bonfire under terrorism," spurring al-Qaida recruiting. Beyond that, invading Iraq threatens to alienate the rest of the world and normalize the doctrine of preemption, making it an option for countries like China and India who nurture their own dreams of changing hostile regimes. Finally, there's simply no way to know whether Iraqis would consider a devastating bombing campaign a fair price to pay for removing a hated despot.

None of that is covered under "War is bad for children and other living things," a resuscitated slogan from the '60s that proved popular Saturday. After all, Saddam is bad for children too. He tortures them.

Perhaps this kind of discussion doesn't belong at a rally at all. Maybe a massive protest is supposed to simply be an exhilarated gathering of the faithful, a brief moment in which an often demonized radical ideology masquerades as conventional wisdom. But by not acknowledging the moral nuances of either the pro- or antiwar position, many protesters gave themselves over to simple callousness.

Phil Leif, an 18-year-old from Maryland who describes himself as "very socially liberal," was so frustrated by the protesters' failure to even mention Saddam's crimes that he found some cardboard and made a sign saying, "Saddam Is Also Guilty of Genocide. Depose and Prosecute." He walked through the crowd praising the International Criminal Court, not an idea that most lefties would seem to take offense at. Nevertheless, he was clearly off message in this crowd, and people started calling him an imperialist. He responded drolly, "Yes, I'm going to go out and conquer various developing nations."

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