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

To: carranza2 who wrote (119082)	11/10/2003 11:26:40 AM
From: Chas.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

The answer to the Iraq situation lies in WH planning and ingenuity of which they are completely lacking........ I OTOH happen to have the answer....... Hollywood, it is all up to Hollywood, we need to employ several struggling type Arab actors to act as Leaders, National figure types, etc, pay them hansomely, in the millions of $$$, their job will be to provide the leadership required to "Jumpstart" the Iraqi turnover process.......this is doable, "Moon over Parador" I think, Richard Dryfus, the great Raoul Julia , could show the way.... It will require great imagination and innovation, at this point, to successfully come out on top........ regards

To: carranza2 who wrote (119082)	11/11/2003 7:05:46 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Let me thank you for taking the time to present Mr. Pollack's point of view. What Pollack's argument boils down to is that Saddam was an untrustworthy and perhaps insane person with whom deterrence would not have worked. I could agree with Pollack that Saddam would not be easily deterred. But deterrence is simply a means to nullifying hostile intentions and intentions are always secondary to capabilities. There are many people around the world who would love to see the US destroyed. But since they have no capability to do so, we do not even try to deter them, let alone go out and kill them. What Pollack missed in that argument was establishing we'd be incapable of detecting and destroying Saddam's WMD if he came close to crossing a certain threshold. The second point missing from Pollack's argument is the issue of timing and methods. For example it is unclear why we could not have spent another year developing better post invasion infrastructures (both political and physical). IMO the reason for both of these is that this war was an opportunistic attempt to take over Iraq. Clearly the WMDs and their delivery methods were not there. Nor could Bush & Co. wait to plan for post invasion Iraq better or their blank check written on 9/11 would have expired. As to the rest of your post regarding my "astonishing claim", nothing in what you said disputes my assertion that the Persian Gulf is an externally stable region. Your only counter example was Saddam, which I had already covered. So I make it simpler for you to get the point: Other than Saddam, who has invaded another Persian Gulf country in 100 years? And no you cannot use US or British forces as an answer. I work hard to choose my words carefully and precisely. Please do the same with your own. ST PS Egypt, Syria, and Yemen are not Persian Gulf countries. Take a look at the map before answering. For the sake of argument, I'd even let you include invasions of Persian Gulf states by their neighboring countries. So Turkish colonization of Iraq and Russia's invasion of northern Iraq do qualify, but do you want to take a guess as to how long ago those were?