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

To: epicure who wrote (139134)	7/7/2004 2:40:04 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You weren't discussing the 1991 war? You'll excuse me, then for being so lame as to misinterpret your post's language: We could have let Saddam invade tiny Kuwait and keep it. True. I don't think that would have been anything like WWII- do you? If you can cast your mind back to the long Iran-Iraq war, you will recall that Iraq was no Germany. It was even less of a Germany after we beat it up after it's attempt on Kuwait. The Osirak reactor was bombed in 1981; the Gulf war took place in 1991. In the interim, Saddam did his best to develop nuclear bombs. If we had allowed him to keep Kuwait, as I think you suggest, his nuclear efforts could have been successful, throwing the world into utter chaos. No less a personage than Pollack discusses this. Saddam himself has apparently told any number of his senior-level officials, after the Gulf War, that he believes that his biggest mistake during the Gulf War, the second Gulf War, was not that he should never have invaded Kuwait, but that he should have waited another year or two until after he had a nuclear weapon -- because once he had a nuclear weapon, the United States wouldn't have dared to attack him. And, as I said, what we have heard from other sources is that Saddam believes once he has a nuclear weapon, he can once again do whatever he wants to in the region. He can attack whomever he wants, blackmail whomever he wants, and threaten whomever he wants. This is unique. We've never seen another leader like this. iraqwatch.org Try to imnagine, if you will, Saddam in 1992 or 1993, with his troops in Kuwait, a situation I think with which you do not have a problem, next door to Saudi Arabia, armed with nuclear weapons. I'd say Germany in 1939 would have been a very apt comparison. I think Neocon was spot on. I think we were fortunate that Saddam miscalculated as badly as he did. Fast forward ot the present. We now know that Pakistan had a very nice business going selling nuclear technology and, who knows, could have sold bombs. We know Russia has serious difficulties with proliferation. We know that NKorea is a serious problem in that regard. There may be even more proliferators out there we very well may not know a thing about. Tell me again, knowing that given enough cash it might very well be possible to obtain nuclear weapons without the need to develop them internally, why Saddam was not a threat.