I'd say Saddam has acted rationally
As Ken Pollack pointed out, you can agree with this statement without taking much comfort from it, as Saddam's track record includes several near-suicidal miscalculations. These may derive from his own moods of grandiosity, or from the bad information he gets from the yes-men he surrounds himself with. Even if Saddam were superbly rational from this moment forward, suppose he thinks that he is ten times stronger than he really is, and the US ten times weaker? He may then "rationally" conclude that he can fight the US to a draw around Baghdad.
Answer me this. You and I can tell that Bush means business about Iraqi disarmament. Bush might really prefer regime change, but having been argued into the UN/disarmament route, he'd have a tough time going for regime change if Saddam looked like he was disarming. I mean, look at all the trouble he's going through now, when it's patently clear that Saddam is not disarming a bit, but offering pretend compliance on process only, nothing of substance! If Saddam had read the situation better, he might have offered up half his WMDs, just what he thought we knew about from 1998 and imint, and kept the rest. Bush couldn't have gone in then. So why didn't Saddam do just that? |
