To: Bilow who wrote (56859 ) 11/13/2002 12:51:51 AM From: Clarksterh Respond to My guess that the west would allow Saudi Arabia to possess nukes (or might move nukes to Saudi Arabia itself) is well supported by history. The US supplied assistance to both Iraq and Iran as it sought to balance them against each other. And the US certainly hasn't been hesitant to allow Saudi Arabia to buy huge amounts of very effective modern US technology. If the option truly were to allow Saddam to beat up on the Saudis and obtain an oil monopoly, then sure, the US would drop the non proliferation stance and allow Saudi Arabia to arm itself. that ?! But lets address the possibilities - first, we'd have to know when he got the bomb. It seems he's pretty good at hiding that. Second, we'd have to be willing to do much the same as we are currently doing with N. Korea - costing billions and billions, putting 100s of thousands of US troops at risk, allowing all the Iraqis to continue to suffer, ... . This is fact seems more interventionist than just squeezing now.The fact is that nuclear weapons, due to their diplomatic consequences, are useless weapons. Saddam couldn't use them to make Malta roll over, much less Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. Nukes are simply not a useful weapon for an aggressor. The whole history of the cold war is that nukes are defensive weapons possessed by states that want to protect their homelands from foreign military action, not weapons that allow anyone to invade and takeover anything. Cause it's not my fight. Yes, but (a) Iraq isn't in my neighborhood, (b) Iraq isn't a criminal, it's a country, (c) a nuke is not a gun.
