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To: Dayuhan who wrote (3310)	3/18/2002 1:07:47 AM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

I wonder if any intermediate step is possible. Surely we must have some idea of the location of the facilities that we suspect are involved in the chemical/biological/nuclear side of the equation. I wonder if it would be possible to use massive air strikes to degrade or eliminate the defenses at those sites and to prevent reinforcement, and insert ground forces for long enough to penetrate the sites, determine what is going on there, take prisoners for interrogation, and leave. email that to Bush! The downside: We might miss facilities (although producing nukes is complicated enough that it's unlikely they would be able to proceed if anything significant is taken out.) An action like that could ignite the region anyway. AND: A number of our supposed European allies went over the hill on the Iraqi embargo after they kicked out the inspectors. Why assume they would not stab us in the back again?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (3310)	3/18/2002 2:05:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

If it got really sticky, we could destroy all WMD and WMD construction capacity, and bail. To really find and destroy all of this capability we would probably have to be there awhile. Long enough that the local people and various radical Islamic groups would see it as an occupation. I suppose we could do a decent job without an occupation, if we just got cooperation from the government in Iraq, but the cooperation would have to be real, not Saddam's previous tactic of delaying inspectors while he moved the WMD materials or documents to a new location. To get real support we would probably need a new government. That new government might need support of the US military, and then you get back to an occupation or at least something that will be percieved as such. Tim