Al Re... make this prediction... as the days pass, more intelligence people will come forward and show the country what a collection of dishonest bastards run this country today.
Never happen, unless Tenet comes out and says he proved to GW and the rest at the White House, that there weren't any WMD. Who cares if a lowly investigator in the CIA told someone he believed there weren't any WMD, because for everyone who says there weren't, there might be one, five or ten, who say they thought there were. In the end, the decision to go to war, depended upon more than just whether Saddam had WMD,and/or could sanctions contain him; but rather upon whether anyone could trust this guy, or his regime, and/or would the costs of sanctions be small enough, and reliable enough, such that war was the more expensive alternative. In other words Saddam either had to show where the WMD were, and destroy his production programs, and plants, or could sanctions contain Saddam, and his cronies, reliably enough and long enough, such that war wasn't the only option.
I would argue that the answer to both of those questions is a resounding no. There is no way anyone could trust Saddam, no matter how often he pleaded innocence, and that the sanctions would have to be so burdensome to be reliable, they weren't an option; even for a short period of time, much less the 40 - 50 yrs it seemed like Saddam and his sons would control Iraq. In fact, the sanctions had already gone on over 10 yrs, were very costly, and were far beyond the point of being a viable alternative. |
