You are speculating again.
You asked how do I know that Saddam wasn't just about to fall. Such a question calls for speculation, unless one of us can accurately predict the future and my crystal ball broke down and is no longer under warranty.
My point was that we can speculate all we want but it doesn't mean its going to happen the way we think its going to happen.
BTW next time, get a crystal ball made by BMW.........their warranties are 5 years.
Can we really know that Saddam would not have fallen over and died the next time a stiff breeze blew through Baghdad of course not. Similarly we can not know that Intel won't declare bankruptcy or go to $10bil per share when the market opens on Tuesday. But a reasonable person can examine possibilities without drifting off in to fantasy and I'm not going to sell all my other holding to buy puts or calls on Intel on Monday.
Sure and the bigger the situation, the more the variables, the more ways to go and the more possible outcomes. Again, you're saying that if we didn't invade Iraq, things would have developed in a particular way. Well, I am saying there were probably 15 other possibilities as well.
Bottomline: I don't think all the possibilities were explored very well. And btw I think all the possibilities have a pretty equal probability of happening.
And one last thing.......I think there were probably several probabilites that would have been far more effective than the one Bush chose. Containment was just one of them even if it meant more suffering by the Iraqi people.
The USSR was, in some ways, more ruthless than Saddam. Who would have thought that economics would have brought them to their knees and caused their collapse?
Stalin was probably more ruthless then Saddam. Maybe even some of the other Soviet leaders, but Gorbachov and even the leaders that preceded him where not. If Gorbachov was as ruthless as Saddam he could have kept the Soviet Union together for years longer, perhaps indefinitely.
That's a hard one to argue. However, ruthlessness does not guarantee staying in power. On the eve of his departure, Taylor of Liberia is learning that lesson the hard way.
And, of course, once again, we are being sucked into another confrontation that is none of our business.
Meanwhile the Kurds in Iraq have always given Saddam much to worry about......given the quality of Saddam's troops, its conceivable the Kurds could have started a rebellion that led to a civil war in Iraq. In fact, I find it odd that it had not happened by the time we invaded Iraq. I suspect the Kurd's ongoing war in Turkey is the reason.
The Soviet Unions collapse came after the better part of a century and after not having as brutal of leader as Saddam for years.
That's not true......the soviet system was brutal right to the end. The gulags existed right to the end. The system fell apart not because they weren't harsh enough but because there was not enough money to run the place. Right near the end, in the early 90s, Gorbachev eased up because he had no choice.....there wasn't the money for the brutal enforcement needed under soviet system of gov't.
A collapse easily might not have happened in 10 years or even 20. But I assumed for the sake of argument that we could count on no more Saddam (or equivalently nasty Bathist party rule) in 10 years. But those 10 more years would have been worse then the invasion.
For whom? The next ten years most likely will not be good for this country because of our decision to invade Iraq. And it may prove very bad for the Iraqis as well; particularly if a civil war breaks out.
Furthermore, I have some real doubts about the ability of establishing a democracy in Iraq. Most of the world's strongest democracies were established because the people wanted it.......badly. The success rate of those democracies where its handed to the people on a silver platter tends to be rather low.
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