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

To: KonKilo who wrote (102206)	6/20/2003 8:41:51 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Containment was coming apart. The status [quo] was was untenable On the contrary, it appears now that containment was extremely viable, if an absence of WMD was the goal. Containment (which we did NOT, and do NOT, know about and had to assume was NOT happening since Saddam was NOT cooperating with Res 1441) that requires 200,000 troops on the border is buying far, far too little at far too high a price. See point d). b) Bush determined to go to the UN. c) Bush decided to kick-start the UN and give inspections their only chance of working by planting an army on Iraq's borders. Why do you suppose Bush chose to kick-start the UN? Was it because he was determined to invade, regardless? Bush can do nothing right in your eyes, can he? He went to the UN because people who care about the UN, like Tony Blair and more than half the American people, convinced him he had to. d) Armies cannot sit without degenerating (not to mention the cost!) This is a curious argument. Do they degenerate during peacetime too? And please do not demean the human costs that have been paid since, by bringing up mere money. You know, I have seen some version of this response several times this year, and I find it stupifying every time. Do you really think about armies as if they did not contain people? And then get high and mighty about "human cost", to boot? In peacetime, people work their regular rotations and go home to their families at night. They don't sit for months and years in tents away from home in a desert where the temperature rises to 130 degrees. If anybody is stupid enough to order them to just sit like that, morale and readiness will suffer for it.