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

To: Neocon who wrote (106091)	7/17/2003 5:16:42 PM
From: spiral3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I myself do not feel we yet have grounds to conclude that the intelligence was so weak, first of all. It seems that a lot of the Intelligence was sound, neither of us are privy to it, but a fair chunk of it pointed to his WMD development winding down. I can imagine scenarios where Saddam gets rid of stockpiles and hides delivery systems, almost up to the brink of war, so that the original intelligence was sound enough. If this were the case, the red line around Bagdad was what ? The other matter is suggesting that the very faultiness of intelligence is a reason for pre- emption. I think that may be true in cases where the apparent threat is large, and you cannot get the intelligence to reassure yourself of a tolerable threat level. In other words, there should still be plenty of reason to be concerned on the basis of best available information. On the other hand, realizing limitations in verification, one cannot afford to wait and see if it is, for example, a question of a nuclear device. Ok, thanks just trying to understand. Do you think we should start bombing North Korea’s Nuclear facilities ? Policemen, in the line of duty, are not asked to verify if the perp has a gun and the intention to use it, they merely have to have a reasonable belief that they are about to be shot. Thus, if the perp has been ordered to keep his hands up, and suddenly reaches for something in his pocket, it is a "clean shoot" if the police officer wings him, because the gesture is inherently threatening under the circumstances. Sadam was a perp, fine, but policemen who shoot the unarmed often have to face a trial to determine whether or not their belief was "reasonable". Your metaphor is akin to me being brought up on charges of trespassing on a lady’s property, and having to plead innocent of rape just because I have the equipment. Even if we were sure of the elimination of all stockpiles, it would have taken little to have started everything up again. That was the point of the recent unearthing of documents and instruments related to a nuclear program, in the backyard of one of the Iraqi scientists. Hussein was just biding time, and if he thought he finally had to dump some stockpiles, it was no great matter, he could be up and running in a short time. No matter how much I like Alice in Wonderland, I don’t believe that a nuclear program of sufficient threat, can be buried in a Bagdad garden or for that matter, dug up and assembled so quickly that no one would notice. This is just not credible. Hiding a nuclear device might be an entirely different matter. The danger was that the inspections would wrap up, everyone would lose interest, and there would be pressure to step down our presence in the region. The only one’s trying to wrap up Inspections were Sadam, and he'd started to blink, and the US. Given his propensities, ideological and personal, and his obvious determination to get WMDs, particularly nukes, we could not afford to let him get away with cosmetic change, he had to go....... Given these propensities, wouldn’t it have made sense to use these weapons on advancing Coalition forces. Why didn’t he use them ? One cannot deny that he once had these ambitions and that he deserved to die for what he’d done in the past. Thanks for your thoughts.