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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gamesmistress who wrote (24974)	1/18/2004 11:27:26 AM
From: gamesmistress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793777

Speaking of the nature and level of the threat from Saddam, here's a good post from the FA thread summarizing a Ken Pollack interview on NPR this morning. There's also a link to the interview in the original post. Despite the problems, Pollack sticks by his previous points, i.e., Saddam was a tremendous destabilizing force in the ME, threatening our economy, and a human rights disaster, though he waffles a bit on whether he would have gone to war on Bush's timing, a point in my opinion that doesn't take into account the possibility that Saddam could have obtained fissile material on the black market as well as the overriding political consideration I believe drove the timing, namely, that Bush recognized himself as a potential one term President who fears that the Dems for diplomatic or domestic political reasons would be unable to take the necessary risks when the timing for an operation became obvious. No one has adequately explained to me why it wasn't a good idea to take out Saddam because of the possibility that he could have obtained fissile material on the black market, something he clearly would have done given the opportunity. Message 19705236

To: gamesmistress who wrote (24974)	1/18/2004 12:26:38 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793777

I think that pre-emption and unilateral action are two different things. You're right. Nice catch. It's hard to tell from that snippet what he had in mind, whether one or the other or either or both. I would submit that both are the big deal of which he spoke whether separate or in combination. And both were at issue here. But any nation has the right to unilateral action. It just has to accept the consequences. Yes, re legal right, I agree. Moral right is another matter. Re the latter, there are consequences both in terms of external reactions and penalties and damage to the soul.