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

To: Ilaine who wrote (138891)	7/5/2004 10:08:20 PM
From: Sig	Respond to of 281500

<<I have tried to think about how I would have reacted to arguments in favor of the war against Iraq in the absence of assurances that Saddam had stockpiles of conventional WMD ready to go, and was close to developing stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and it was foolish to wait until he deployed them, in what historians call a "counterfactual," a sort of alternative universe in which the facts were different. You know, like, would the US have entered WWII eventually even if the Japanese never attacked Pearl Harbor? Hard to do.>>> Definitely hard to do, with so many "whats ifs" involved. Ignoring the WMD's ( except for Saddams nuclear potential) could a justification for war have risen in the near term anyway? What if the the UN inspectors had found those hundreds of mass graves and investigated ? What if the the extent of Saddams pay-offs to hundreds of politicians and businessmen under the oil for food programs been discovered.? What if France had not tried to retain their oil field development contracts with Saddam. What if OBL had chose to hide out in Iraq instead of in Afghanistan? Saddam either wanted this war or misjudged the US since he could have stopped it anytime before the first missiles flew. Could have said to the UN, "I (burned, buried, sold) the WMD's and here is the paperwork you required in those resolutions. Here are the names of scientists and other people who did that work per my request and you can question them anywhere you like in private." It would have been extremely difficult for the US to justify a war had he done that. But since the UN had no teeth, it would have left Saddam in control when the majority of countries, including the Iraqis, now agree that his removal was a good thing for mankind. Sig