If saddam would have acted in such a way as to lead the inspectors to believe their efforts were fruitless then force would have been necessary as mandated by the UN.
The buildup of troops was a choice also.
If you say he was complying only because the troops were there then that begs the question.
It's pretty obvious the troops were placed there solely with the intention to invade not to enforce inspections.
Had there been a smaller force there, large enough to threaten but not so large as to invade, saddam would have had the choice...which is what the UN intended to give him...to comply or not.
The EU countries that (I do understand they had selfish, disingenuos motives) were against the immediate use of force were willing to support force if the inspectors were not satisfied with progress. A two to three month timeframe was going to be settled on.
I also understand Iraq was to be placed at the head of the weapons non-proliferation committee. I don't see that that would have made any difference. The inspections and time limit would have still been in place.
You may say, "what about the 12 years??"
In those 12 years many nasty little things happened to Iraq that continued to degrade his capabilities...some of Clinton's actions have been mentioned here. Those actions had worldwide support.
If he did not comply with the inspection process within or at any time during the 2 or 3 months, I would have no argument against the use of force. The world forum would have no argument.
It boils down to to the reality that this administration intended to invade Iraq all along. The reasons given are not genuine. If the reasons given were genuine, there would have been no bogus attempts to tie saddam to bin laden, no forged documents, no plagiarized term papers paraded as "intelligence", no massive buildup of forces that could only mean full-scale invasion, no satellite pictures of "chemical weapons factories" that were patently vague and completely useless presented to the UN, no media campaign to dupe 50% of the American public into thinking saddam was responsible for 9/11...
none of that would have been deemed necessary...it was two-bit chicanery.
And as Blair said...regime change in North Korea is next.
That's ANOTHER war. How many friggin' wars????
Will the media help drum up support by tying NK to OBL?
Will fearmongering continue to manufacture support?
Or will an "incident" appear out of thin air...that one has worked before.
Or will the PNAC crowd antagonize NK into freaking out and "necessitate" a war?
After NK...who's next???
Iran...
After Iran...
how many wars before the US under PNAC will need to be contained?
What countries' citizens will accuse others of their countrymen of being appeasers rather than take on a war machine run amok?
And all the while we'll be living under RED alerts.
The nastiest thing about the invasion of Iraq right now is the increased threat of another terrorist attack. If/when one happens, the PNACies will easily be able to justify brazen aggression at will.
It's going to be a very difficult time ahead.
I believe the best way to decrease the risk everywhere, right now...is to get rid of the whole PNAC crowd. They're worse than bad news. Not individually, personally worse than saddam but in aggregate...unhealthy for this country.
gnite |
