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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: epicure who wrote (139228)7/8/2004 9:31:16 AM
From: carranza2  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
It sure SOUNDS like Saddam was deterred from keeping his weapons by inspectors. Several of the instances cited, which involved Saddam destroying weapons and cooperating, however unwillingly, involve situations that could certainly be described as deterrent in nature.

Did you read Pollack's explanation for why he thinks Saddam did not accumulate WMD? If you did, you are avoiding it or perhaps not capturing its meaning.

Saddam was not deterred from attacking Iran or Kuwait by the fact that his opponents had serious weaponry arrayed against him or the fact that he was obviously going to incur very serious losses as a result of these crazy ventures. He had a history of irrationality, i.e., not being able to make rational calculations, which made him extremely dangerous. And undeterrable by rational calculus.

The only deterrence he understood were Israel's nukes. He accordingly never launched a WMD attack against it, though he took an incredibly stupid risk when he launched Scuds against it in 1991.
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