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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (68357)	3/7/2003 2:13:46 PM
From: JSwanson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

US had pondered the issue well and had very good ideas about what to expect Show me the evidence that the US had any idea what the cost of getting into the war was relative to staying out of it other than it would be a larger cost to humanity if Hitler was allowed to prevail. The US only knew that left unchecked Hitler would control all of Europe and Northern Africa with eyes of moving on into Russia. I believe that the only expectation was to stop Germany's aggression, return the land seized to the rightful countries and to set up a government in Germany that would respect the freedom of its neighbors as well as it people. Which is precisely why we can have a debate whether or not we should continue this approach. We have had 12 years of experience with Saddam and attempts to disarm him. He will only grudgingly comply if he has a credible threat bearing down on him. Remove that threat and he is back to rebuilding/acquiring banned weapons programs. At any rate the countries that affirmed the roughly seventeen UN resolutions specifically pertaining to the aggression/weapons violations of Iraq should have thought about those issues when they signed the damned resolutions in the first place. My guess would be that they did (ie Cost to world if Iraq has WMD >> Cost to world if Iraq doesn't have WMD) how much drugs are on the streets Supply and Demand. Habits and Addictions create demand and drug producers meet the demand. The US war on drugs serves as an increase in the cost of production and delivery. We don't need a drug war to know that, just Econ 101. Look, I believe that the US's desired outcome is to remove Saddam and pursue a multi-lateral solution to install a government that supports freedom both in the country and in the region. That has been said. No one will know what the exact costs are until they are paid. Those costs will be huge. Will they be disproportionate to the cost to the US and other countries after WWII on an inflation adjusted basis? Probably not. Will the world be better off? Most likely. Again, I also think that you need to factor in the opportunity cost of not acting. What if Saddam gets control of the region, gets nuclear capabilities? To ignore this possibility in this day in age is foolish. The US is no longer isolated from these potential threats. What is the cost of a nuclear blast in Washington, what is the cost of small pox attack in the US, what is the cost of having Oil from the Middle East in the control of Saddam, all on a probability weighted basis? If I am missing you point, I'm sorry and I'll gladly bow out of the discussion for now. JS