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

To: greenspirit who wrote (141370)	7/24/2004 11:37:45 AM
From: dumbmoney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Duelfer’s Bombshell daily.nysun.com Sarin. Mustard gas. Botulinum. Cyanide salt. It’s getting harder to claim that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These columns argued against making disarmament the main reason for war, preferring an emphasis on freedom and democratization as outlined in the Iraq Liberation Act. Still, the disclosures remind us that we’d much rather have American soldiers and intelligence officers hunting for these weapons on foreign soil. The alternative would be to have American police and firemen and FBI agents swarming over the scene of a terrorist attack here in New York, trying to figure out after the fact what deadly substance had been used against us and where it came from. What a dumb argument. We are supposed to feel much safer because we found 10 leftover sarin devices that Saddam didn't know he had, and wouldn't have used if he did know. But we must not give any thought to the possibility that there are another 10 that we didn't find, which are now available on the black market; those are perfectly harmless, apparently.

To: greenspirit who wrote (141370)	7/24/2004 1:37:49 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

With respect to Saddam's WMD or lack thereof, it's such an "eye of the beholder" thing, turning in large part on how you stand on the 2004 presidential election, and/or on the concept of the US as sole superpower, and a multitude of other factors. If the shells are left over from the Iran-Iraq war, and are degraded, to me, that's not terribly important, because we knew he had Sarin then, and he was supposed to have destroyed it, but could not prove that. I'd be interested in learning about existing programs that could make new Sarin shells. I admit I haven't been scouring the reports looking for evidence that Saddam retained an interest in making new WMD once the sanctions were removed (if ever) because I assume that he must have been, otherwise he would have let inspectors in. The only semi-intelligent argument against this is one of Mq's raps, that Saddam wanted to retain sovereignty and thus of course would not let inspectors in because they were spies. Yeah, well, we see how that turned out. The recent Senate report confirms that Saddam was at least interested in buying yellowcake, which isn't for birthday parties. Maybe he wasn't a danger in the near future, but I agree with Bush and Blair, it was stupid to wait. The only semi-intelligent argument against THAT is why Saddam, why now, why not Iran, North Korean, et al? And the answer to that should be, their time will come. If Kerry is elected, it would be interesting to see what he does about Iran and North Korea. He'll have to do something, whether it's proactive or reactive.