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

To: Elsewhere who wrote (130199)	4/27/2004 3:22:08 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

A good analyst with "out-of-the-box" thinking could have imagined that Saddam is just playing poker with the world - especially since the UN inspectors didn't find any WMD anymore; their remaining questions mainly concerned the accounting of the destruction. But a good "out of the box" analyst would still have to prove his case.. Foreign policy is seldom truly made solely on the basis of a hunch. And after July, 1998, when UNSCOM inspectors discovered a document clearly stating that Iraq had misrepresented the number of chemical weapons used against Iran BY FULLY ONE THIRD, and then confiscated those documents most of the "in the box" analysts had the upper hand with the policy makers. Trying to assert that Saddam had destroyed all of his weapons would have been contrary to almost all personality profiles that had been developed on him. In almost every way, and at every juncture, he attempted to intimidate, delay, deceive, and defeat the inspections process. He used bribery of state officials (via the oil for food scandal not being uncovered) to assist in subverting the US to his will... And even then, we STILL discovered that he had reverted his WMD R&D program to his direct control and was paying scientists to continue it surreptiously. So we didn't find the stockpiles of WMDs we expected... But no one YET has provided the evidence to prove that they haven't been hidden somewhere, or transferred to another regional power (Syria?).. And we know that no other nation's intelligence service could convincingly argue that Saddam wasn't squirreling away those 6,000 warheads. Hawk

To: Elsewhere who wrote (130199)	4/27/2004 7:12:52 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

A good analyst with "out-of-the-box" thinking could have imagined that Saddam is just playing poker with the world - especially since the UN inspectors didn't find any WMD anymore; their remaining questions mainly concerned the accounting of the destruction. He would have had to be a genius of an analyst, an Einstein of deduction. Everything known about Saddam pointed to the exact opposite of what has been determined to be the facts. In order to be credible, this super-analyst would have had to prove a negative circumstantially, as all negatives are proven. The circumstances [previous use of WMD, attempts to obtain them, continous and repeated inspection evasion, megalomania, etc.], unfortunately, did not at the time suggest that Saddam was bluffing. And he may not have been bluffing. The full story may not have yet played out. C2@notinthebox.com