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

To: jcky who wrote (36133)	8/6/2002 2:37:40 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

in body bags from Iraq, There seems to be an overwhelming desire on the part of some people in this country to "Vietnamize" any war. I don't know if it is a "back to the '60s" nostalgia problem, or just a general distaste for doing the job we need to do. I think you will find, that when we finally do finish the job in the Middle East, that the people of this country will be behind the action.

To: jcky who wrote (36133)	8/6/2002 2:45:00 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Body bags, war images...At the beginning of the US presence in Viet Nam, there was plenty of film piped home on the news. The horror of viewing the war seeing American boys bleeding, hearing them scream turned so many undecided Americans against it that war footage on the nightly news was discontinued. Did you notice that the only war footage from the last Iraq Attack was a repeat of the same missile lighting up the purported sky of Iraq interspersed with another view. They didn't show films of the foot soldiers, it was stills. For that matter, do we see American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan being dragged off to be flayed by the Taliban, then mercifully shot by their own troops. NO. That kind of film is contraband because families of soldiers would be opposed to war, and volunteers just wouldn't. This war is going to be a hard sell. Probably there will need to be another "terrorist attack" within the US to fire up American ire.

To: jcky who wrote (36133)	8/6/2002 2:46:09 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

debka agrees with Butler that Saddam Hussein is unlikely to give away WMDs, The London Sunday Times reported this week that Saddam Hussein plans to supply Palestinian terrorist groups with biological weapons for striking at Israeli and American targets. DEBKAfile’s investigative staff treats this information with caution. Our military sources have reported in the past that Iraqi military intelligence agents operating undercover in the West Bank, mostly in the Ramallah area, may have these weapons, but there is no evidence that they have been handed over to Palestinians. Such a handover would have to be decided by Saddam in person out of strategic considerations of his own – not merely to help Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians out of a tight corner. WMD are the Iragi ruler’s option for fighting off an American offensive or punishing US allies. One way he might avail himself of this option would be for a swift assault on large units of warplanes and helicopters, should the US war command park them on the air strips US military engineers are building in the Kurdish regions (as reported exclusively in another article on this page). These aircraft would improve the mobility of the US special forces operating in northern Iraq immeasurably. To get back at Israel, Saddam would not need to deploy suicide bombers who would leave a wide trail to their senders. Iraqi military laboratories have developed a range of ingenious delivery devices - from pocket sprays that an agent can activate while walking down a crowded street, to crop spray units attached to the under-wings of Iraqi Mirage F-1 warplanes. In swift dives over the Jordan River Valley, these planes can drop clouds of biological killer substances, lifting off within seconds for the return flight before they are caught. The Iraqi ruler would consider such action a gift too valuable to present to Arafat.