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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (136205)	6/11/2004 9:47:12 AM
From: carranza2	Respond to of 281500

Who could say for sure what time Saddam would have needed to acquire a Pakistani or North Korean nuke? Thank you, Nadine, thank you. The point that no one but no one of the proponents-now-doubters, frank opponents, and fence sitters can deal with in any honest fashion except to admit the fact that it is correct. Simply and concisely put, Saddam did not necessarily have to make his own WMD, including nuclear stuff. He had the money and the means to buy WMD. Why risk detection under those circumstances? This is a point Pollack specifically made in his book. This is a point I have repeatedly made, most recently here, in describing what Pollack said in The Atlantic: Pollack is critical, no doubt, but concludes that the war was not a strategic mistake. Naturally, the fact that Saddam's WMD efforts, particularly nuclear, were not as far along as everyone thought suggests that we had more time to deal with him than everyone thought. His primary call is for an improved intelligence collecting mechanism. However, he does not deal with a serious point that he actually made in his book, i.e., the possibility that Saddam could purchase nukes and other WMD. Message 20212315 It's the elephant in the bedroom no one sees. Or cares to see. I suppose what has been proven to have taken place in Libya, North Korea, Pakistan and Iran couldn't happen in Iraq. If anyone believes that, there's a bridge in Brooklyn I'm selling. Cheap. It astonishes me that purportedly intelligent people can ignore this point but, as we all know, sometimes the game is to reflexively take a position, then defend it to its death, regardless of the merits.