To: GST who wrote (151772 ) 1/22/2003 2:38:59 PM From: Lizzie Tudor Read Replies (2) | Respond to I'm going to comment here and then opt out of any further discussion ... I am really quite torn on this issue at this point. There was an NPR piece a month or so ago (I posted a link here where you could listen to the replay) ... this was a totally impartial chronicle of the events wrt the first weapons inspectors in the early 90s before they were jettisoned out of Iraq. It was clear to me, from this piece, that Iraq at that time was totally disregarding any directives that said no weapons. They ordered millions of tons of chemicals and said they were for hospital use, really egregious violations like that. NPR is generally a pretty liberal slant on world affairs so I think this was accurate. This infuriated the inspectors then, and the Bush family I think, and now jr. is intent on going back and cleaning up the mess, based on past violations which I believe, really truly did happen. The problem is you are also on stage for the world and war for 10 year old violations of some treaty doesn't fly really. But what is even more disturbing to me is Ari Fleicher openly discussing regime change , and in some cases even assassination publicly in front of the world press (remember his "we only need one bullet" comment). This is not diplomacy. Even if you advocate getting rid of Saddam Hussein, there are better approaches than this. First, you wait until weapons inspectors are done with their job, give them all the time they want. Then you get the UN endorsement. Then after all negotiation is exhausted, you deploy your troops and not before. You never discuss regime change or assassination of any kind, openly. That seems like common sense to me.
