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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (17370)	1/27/2002 7:22:27 PM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 281500

Hi Bilow, Yes, the way Iraq is being dealt with needs some extra attention. I would like to thank the thread for the various comments on the Iraq sanctions issue. After the Gulf war, many were amazed that Saddamn's "mother of all wars" prophesy didn't come to realization. Back in those days we were hoping for the best yet expecting the worst regarding war casualties. Sure we were all glad when peace returned. After the Gulf wars end the UN had inspectors ensuring WMD were not being manufactured in Iraq. They did a good job, too good for Saddamns war mongering crowd. Eventually the UN inspectors were thrown out and the West replied with tough sanctions. The West underestimated how the Iraq leadership would fare under sanctions. They thought if they saw their own citizens starving and dying because of their own stupid determination to continue to manufacture WMD, this would stay their hand. It did not. In fact Saddamn and company found a convenient excuse to blame every ill going on in Iraq to the "great satan" the USA and the West because of the sanctions. It has an element of truth in it. End result is, we have been losing influence in that sphere for some 10 + yrs now. Ok. So we have been bashing our heads against a brick wall. Sanctions should have worked but they didn't. First action now is stop bashing head against brick wall. It's not that difficult to do, so what if some administrator ships a load of goods on hold. I can tell you a shift in policy on the sanctions issue will scare the living s**t out of Saddamns crowd. Bush and Afghanistan have created a different attitude towards the USA in the Arab world, gulf war memories are coming back. Bush could make it a "last chance saloon" scenario for Saddamn & Co. Of course, Putin's view needs researching. Russia has those whackos living on their doorstep. If Saddamn lobs something very nasty at Israel, Israel will lob something at least 10 times as nasty back. No need for advanced degrees in politics to work that out. Back to your post... yes non lethal weapons have an important future in our civilized world imho.