On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 10:46:41 +0000, Pooh Bear
Yes, that'd be nice, but it couldn't be done that way 'cuz the American people wouldn't go along with it for that reason. The WMD's, had they existed, would have been a direct threat to the US since Saddam might have given them to persons. Even then, I think most people were willing to take that chance, rather than get involved in the mideast some more, except for the possibility that some of the WMD's were, or were about to be nuclear. We can put up with a gas or bio attack that kills locally a few thousand people. A few million, and most of the infrastructure of a major city like New York or DC would be a whole different ballgame, being pretty close to unthinkable. That's a good enough reason to invade and make sure the madman doesn't achieve a goal of building nukes and then giving them to persons.
Unfortunately, that's the same problem we have right now with respect to Iran. If these turds get a nuke, where's it going to end up? NYC? DC? LA? Vegas? I don't think that the American people are going to be OK with going into Iran for any reason now, because of how things have gone in Iraq, but Iran is still a problem.
I think the problem could be solved another way, by going back to a version of MAD. That is, if a person nuke goes off in one of our cities, we absolutely butture the state that sponsored it, and we can be pretty sure that we can identify it, that they will all glow in the dark, nationwide, in retaliation. The individual persons may or may not be from Iran, but if an Iranian plant goes off here, the entire country of Iran would be guaranteed to be totally destroyed in a nuclear attack that they can't possibly even imagine. Such a credible threat should be all that's needed to keep those nukes at home. (Same goes for N. Korea, BTW - MAD worked with the biggest, nastiest bunch of bad-guys on the planet, the Russians, for decades, and it'll work with these turds too. The leaders are always OK with sending someone else out to get end, but when they know that they, personally, are going to die in a nuclear firestorm, that changes things a lot.)
All the world's intelligence agencies agreed that Iraq probably had WMD's and wasn't too far away from having a nuke. The UN weapons inspectors were a farcical endeavor aimed at publicity - if someone wants to hide a weapons program in a country that's larger than the state of California, no outsiders are going to be able to find it, especially when the team was not allowed to have our experts on it - we were supposed to believe a bunch of people from foreign countries who had not had their buildings demolished by a bunch of Arab buttholes and who might have had a few good reasons not to find weapons of mbutt distruction even if they were there. Plus, the inspection team was being delayed, denied access, etc. repeatedly, while the locals were sneaking stuff out the back door.
Don't really think it was about that. There are tons of similar dictators around the world, and we don't give a poo about them 'cuz they don't threaten our interests. Its great to have Saddam not in power, but it was really about neutralizing a threat to this country.
Dave Head
