"The CIA (a veritable hotbed of anti-US pacifists) does not believe that Hussein would use WMD's
against the US unless his back was against the wall."
OK, I've had it with this ****. I posted last week about the fact that this isn't what's important
about what Tenet said, that it's just a rational statement of caution, and that the peace movement
always leaves out the section where he testifies that: "the likelihood of Saddam using W.M.D. for
blackmail, deterrence, or otherwise grows as his arsenal builds." You read it, yet here you are
making the same s****d claim.
Do you not pay attention? Never mind, I've had it. Just don't have the time for this game.
--
--Scott
[email protected] Cut the "tail" to send email.
"Tom Sherman" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Freewheeling wrote:
> >
> > Tom:
> >
> > If they currently had an *effective* strategic capability they wouldn't
be
> > playing this game of hide and seek at all. The danger, fortunately,
isn't
> > what they have at the moment but what they're working on. And even if
we
> > were, by some unaccountable miracle, to remove *all* their current capability the fact that they
> > could simply utilized their knowledge base
and
> > ability to bypass the economic sanctions to get going again represents
an
> > ongoing political and military problem.
> >
> > Furthermore, they need not have an effective strategic capability to
destroy
> > a city. A container the size of a refrigerator, hidden in a shipping container at a major port
> > could do it, on the nuclear side. Even
simpler if
> > they employ biological or chemical.
>
> Scott,
>
> And why should we invade Iraq, but not North Korea, which certainly seems to present a greater
> strategic thread, as Kim Jong II may well be mentally unbalanced (not true of Saddam Hussein from
> the available evidence), and has or could rapidly develop the capability to hit US allies such as
> South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan with nuclear armed missiles, or possibly the US and Europe with
> further developmental work? Is it because Iraq is much weaker militarily than North Korea? Would
> this not give other countries the incentive to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to
> deter attacks by the US?
>
> Another danger would be the US invasion of Iraq triggering an Islamic fundamentalist overthrow of
> the government in Pakistan. Then we would have to deal with another enemy with nuclear weapons and
> ballistic missiles. Such a regime might even be willing to turn over a nuclear weapon to terrorist
> groups such as Al Qaeda to use in an attack on Israel or the US (a much greater probability than
> Hussein ever would turn over WMD's to fundamentalist terrorists, unless he knew a US invasion was
> inevitable).
>
> The CIA (a veritable hotbed of anti-US pacifists) does not believe that Hussein would use WMD's
> against the US unless his back was against the wall. Saddam Hussein has never been particularly
> anti-US or anti-Western; at one time he boasted about being the best friend of the US in the
> Middle East. It was the US that betrayed him, by giving the green light for the invasion of Kuwait
> [1], not the other way around.
>
> And how much of a threat could Iraq pose with if the French-Russian proposal in put into place:
> three times the current numbers of UN weapons inspectors back up by armed UN forces in Iraq, a
> complete no-fly over Iraq with surveillance flights for weapons inspection, and 150,000 US troops
> stationed in neighboring countries if Iraq did carry out attacks?
>
> There are other groups that certainly pose more of a danger in attacking the US and Western Europe
> - Al Qaeda for one. A unilateral US invasion of Iraq will both destroy the necessary foreign
> cooperation the US needs to combat such terrorist groups, and serve as a recruiting aid with the
> resulting rise in Muslim and Arab anger at the US. If Bush-Cheney-etc. were really concerned about
> US security, they would focus on Al Qaeda and similar groups and not the invasion of Iraq.
>
> [1] Per the comment of former US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie on July 25, 1990, to Saddam
> Hussein, "We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait.
> Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to
> Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."
>
> Tom Sherman - Quad Cities USA (Illinois side)
>
> "No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear."
> -Edmund Burke
