True. But those weapons were both in warring situations; the first Iraq vs. Iran and the second Iraq vs. a civil war with Kurds where Iranians were involved in the battle. There is evidence he will use them defensively; there is no evidence he will them offensively. Perhaps the best place he could have used them offensively--when he had vast quantities of them--was in the Gulf War agains the US. He didn't.
Saddam doesn't wanna take over the world. It apppears he wants to go down in history as the new Saladin who united the Middle East and defied the forces that tried to bring him down. Indeed, he wants to be the bid deal of the Middle East.
Let me ask you this. If all 22 Arab nations were to vote in an election for Top Dog of the Middle East, do you think they'd vote for Saddam?
My view is he typifies a dictator and is as good of a bad dictator as any there have ever been, including the US-friendly dictators. He's silenced his political opponents by death or exile; he's put spies all over the country and he has his picture up everywhere. He was once America's good dictator; now he's America's bad dictator. What he's being criticized today for is what he wasn't criticized yesterday for.
However, he's not running a religious fanatical government or directing his policies accordingly. Instead it is a secular government where women have rights, there is a real estate market and even a stock market. The only calls from liberation come from his political enemies, not the people who live there.
In effect, Bush is about to liberate a people who have not asked to be liberated. And each of his neighboring countries oppose this war as well.
Bush is moving forward on specualtion only and he's got no beef in the proof that there actually does exist massive quantities of weapons of mass destruction. I think it's more likely that Bush, like Saddam, is playing to history. That Bush wants to finish the work of his father--who I think would have provoked a similar reason to invade had he won a second term--and that Bush, like Saddam, wants to be known in history as a big cheese. The extra bonus if he succeeds in doing this is a very heavily oil-tilted administration with intensive oil-connection backgrounds will all do well by maintaining not only the power to put oil into the market, but the power to keep oil out of the market--the profits each way are almost unimaginable.
Iraq has a population of 22 million, 42 percent of which are under the age of 15. This war will only exist on specualtion, not on just cause, and there's no reason why so many Iraqis should die. And there's no reason why so many of our troops should die, which will happen if the Battle for Baghdad becomes an intensified Morgadishu.
The possibility of the war widening beyond the region--into Pakistan, into Nagorno-Karabakh, into Iran, into Israel and beyond is real. Probably more real than the speculative reasons by which Bush would move forward with his death and destruction campaign.
Worse, Bush is assuming that OBL will have no role either during or in the aftermath of the war. "GO Bush!" has got to be printed large and square on OBL's t-shirt under his tunic.
Bush is making a very bad move on humanity, especially since other options exist. One good way to begin would be to call France, German, Russia and China together and open up a forum to determine what breeds terrorism and how best to stop it. Bush not once has dealt with the issue as to what breeds terrorism. In point of fact, he has not exhausted all remedies and is rushing stubbornly into war, this with the Archbiship of Canterbury and the Pope and all of the people of the world opposed to his action.
It seems all he's managed to do is cause one-third of America to become soldiers of fortune and this is his only support. |
