How exactly are France and Russia doing business with Iraq? I didn't think anyone legally could, unless this is under the guise of "humanitarianism." (Not that I'm surprised, but still.)
Quote:
Originally posted by Undertoad
This has happened before: when Colonel Mu'ammar al-Gaddafi, or Khaddafy or Quadafai or however you want to spell it, took a missile in his backside and decided to play nicely from there on out.
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Not completely. He hemmed and hawwed over the Pan Am trials. And other than a few missiles here and there, we haven't given Saddam a similar treatment (minus the Gulf War).
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(I can't believe I'm doing this...God, forgive me) I agree with tw, in that I don't think Saddam is as big of a threat as he is being made out to be. What can he be inextricably linked to terror-wise since the end of the Gulf War? The ties to al-Qaeda appear weak at best. And Saddam seems to be a pure secularist; therefore, that would make an Osama-Saddam marriage unlikely. (Oh sure, they could unify for a common goal--the downfall of the US--much like the Communists and Nationalists did in China during WW2 against Japan. But Saddam is so drunk on absolute power, I don't think he'd be willing to even give an inch to someone like Osama.)
From my viewpoint, our president (who wasn't strong on foreign policy pre-9/11 to begin with) and his sidekick (who basically helmed the first Gulf War) are picking on a convenient target. Americans have short attention spans...and when it became apparent that we weren't going to find Osama, we turned our attention to the "runt."
The minute Saddam threw out inspectors 4 years ago, there should have been a massive invasion of Allied forces, with lots of bombing and killing of innocent civilians. Admittedly, Clinton was weak on the military end (and probably gunshy after Somalia).
But, we stalled. The UK stalled. France claimed "think of the children!" (Not really, but you get the idea.) Basically, the world dropped the ball. And so, we let Saddam carry on, acting like the jackass that he is.
But what we've also seen is that he's really not a threat to anyone...other than his own people. We're not about to step into the Kurd situation (b/c then the Kurds in Turkey would uprise, and Turkey is firm on keeping them in their place). And in recent times, the Kurds have pretty much been running their own show in the north. I definitely agree that Saddam is a tyrant, but no worse than a Qaddafi.
Slang, I am curious about what happened to these chem/bio agents. But here's the problem with that...
Realistically, we don't really know what he had to begin with. He could have 2 vials or 2 million vials of VX for all we know. Maybe he used all of it up during the Iran-Iraq War or on his attacks on the Kurds. He's talked a bunch of shit in his day...whose to say he had a lot of these agents in the first place?
I think the inspectors need more time. They've only been back there 2 months, and have been gone for over 4 years. Bring in more of 'em...make sure they're well-qualified. And if you can't find anything, well, then you can't find anything. *shrugs* How can you really argue with that? All we can really do is keep them under suspicion as we do North Korea, and get as much intelligence as we can on them.
I just don't see the Bush administration ever being satisfied here. Even if Hans and Mohamed and the gang over in the sand report ridiculously good cooperation from Iraq and find nothing, it's just not going to satisfy this administration.
So, we go to war. A strong wave of Arab nationalism rises up, the US and UK become more frequent victims of terrorist attacks, etc. etc. This is worst-case scenario mind you, but a very real possibility.
Meanwhile, nothing domestically has really been done since that cute tax cut almost 2 years ago (minus the post-9/11 security issues). The economy is improving, yet still sucking a serious fart. We're spinning our wheels here.
I'm sick of it. Let the inspectors do their thing. Leave Saddam to his delusions. Find Osama and his crew. And let's work on repairing our world reputation and getting our domestic house in order.
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