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

To: Sig who wrote (122321)	12/28/2003 8:28:04 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I have made the distinction between imminent and inevitable threat. Imminence implies a narrow time frame, but, as you say, it takes time to bring a plot to fruition, and when you have no firm time line, only the knowledge of means and intent, it makes a lot of sense not to leave matters hanging. If we are pretty sure something is coming, but do not quite know when, that does not mean that it is time to relax, it means we have time to take measures to enhance security, up to and including pre- emption if the threat is great enough. Containment is a strategy for keeping a power from succeeding in the use of conventional military force. It is always too leaky to matter when the issue is one of biological and chemical agents, and when the primary risk is from unconvenional methods of delivery. Even assuming that the WMDs had been destroyed, which I doubt, it is obvious both from the laboratories and storage facilities that have been found, and from testimony from captured scientists, that the regime was ready to ramp up production as soon as the West was off its back. Thus, the matter was only taken back a step or two, the expertise and equipment was there to employ. The threat, in other words, was inherent in the regime, not in any particular situation of stockpiles.........