Ba'athism is a fascist ideology, quite literally. The want to establish hegemony within the Arab world in order to lead Arabs in a struggle against the West, principally the United States. As Kay showed, they maintained the means and expertise to begin mass production of WMDs, at a minimum, and continued to work on improving ballistic missile technology and seeking fissile material on the black market, which shows an intent to pursue the struggle through military means, when the containment regime wound down. That is the main basis of the claim of inevitability: the will and the way both existed.
I would have to refresh myself on the design sharing issue, so I will retract it for the moment, until I can get to it.
Iran is not a country on the Arabian peninsula.
It relates to your point about how the fact that we took this opportunity predicts a strong response in the future. It does not. The time was ripe, but would not remain so.
Your retort is not germane to my point, which was that the use of WMDs, and the resulting horror, might very well have prevented adequate intervention in the future.
Discussing the range of threats, each plausible alone, does a great deal to show that it was probable that something disastrous would happen. That is what military planners do, consider scenarios and think of ways to counter them. |
