The thing you keep dancing around is that there are probably 50 different shaded ways to 'use force' and people are discussing many of them.
Of course there are Ken.. and we've spent the past 12 years almost exhausting every one of them outside of full-blown invasion.. (or at least the credible threat of it) which seems to be where we have wound up at current time.
But it's US and UK forces bearing the primary cost to make up this implicit threat. It's the US/UK leadership which have stuck a political bayonet in the UN's back and prodded them to enforce its BINDING resolutions against Saddam. And neither the US or UK are being reimbursed for the cost of taking this action, which was required after 5 years of NO enforcement whatsoever.
Why, heck, bosses say this every day don't they and they usually have no clue how to accomplish the goal, just do it...
Ahh.. but this is like the supervisor of another competing division telling YOU how to accomplish the boss's mission tasking, while doing everything possible to undercut your efforts.
This assumes that the "boss" is the UNSC via its resolutions, with each individual member making up the different action committees... France has done nothing except attempt to scuttle enforcement of the "bosses" standing orders. In fact, they have unilaterally, in the past, declared Saddam "disarmed", despite no other member accepting such a preposterous position.
So when one of these "smart guys" is back-stabbing the entire organization out of sheer financial self-interest, and willing to bring the whole organization to ruin (remember we're talking about a BINDING resolution of the UNSC), then I think it's only common sense to put the ball in their court and demand they show how to do it better..
And of course, France cannot.
Anyway you look at it, "we" have made an implicit threat to use force. "We" accepted that (congressional authorization to use force), and the UN has not revoked the clause "all necessary means to restore peace and international stability".. Saddam is counting on the belief that "we" will not carry out our threat to disarm (and probably oust) him.
And those who are in opposition are grower fewer, while those in favor have increased in the past several weeks according to a Foxnews Poll:
foxnews.com
Hawk |
