"The reality is that Saddam's regime could not have likely held out for more than another 5 years, IMO.. "
hmmm, I am afraid I'm not sure your reality is a very good guess at what actual reality might be. Do you have any reasons to say this? Or is this just a gut feel. Because if you have factual reasons to say this, I'm curious to know what they were. I would have thought the time when the regime might crumble, would have been on Saddam's death- and I'm not sure the regime would have survived a transfer of power. I think a military coup might have been likely at that point, based on some books I've read. But of course I'm not clairvoyant enough to tell you the day and hour of Saddam's death- so I couldn't tell you in years how long the regime would last. I think Blandbutmarvelous is looking for geniuses to elbow, so steer clean of him, since he might consider psychics fair game as well :-*
As for the rest, we'll just have to disagree on how big a threat Saddam was, and how this ties in to fighting the threat of violent fundamentalist Islamicists. The data seems to indicate he wasn't much of a threat at all, and if there was any data indicating he was, Bush would be hitting that hard, as justification. The fact that he is not, speaks volumes. |
