Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (56277)	7/26/2004 10:29:36 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794049

It seems to me that the state-sponsors of terrorism are still the largest 'hanging fruit' under any rule set, since they provide what non-state actors cannot make for themselves - safe havens. Repeting this won't make it true. Terrorists are finding more and safer havens in the territories of our nominal allies than they are in the supposed state sponsors of terrorism. Operational planning for an attack on the US is more likely to take place in Europe than in Iran or the Sudan. It's safer for them there, and they know it. And frankly, I find the idea that Bush attacked Iraq for short-term political gain absurd. What did he gain from it? Was 80% of the country demanding a war? Was it an easy use of his political capital? Has the past year been easy for him politically? No to all these questions. Things didn't work out the way they were supposed to work out. The war was supposed to be quick, and was supposed to end when major military operations ceased. Reconstruction was supposed to be rapid, and we were supposed to "install" democracy cleanly and quickly. Other hostile states were supposed to quiver in their boots, and submit meekly to our will, and the administration was supposed to ride triumphantly through the election. Of course anyone with a shred of realism knew it wouldn't work that way, but realism was a commodity in short supply in the pre-war days. Why is it so difficult for you to believe that Bush and Blair believed, based on their best intelligence, that Saddam planned to attack the US via terrorist agents... If any intelligence suggesting such a plan existed, it is a well kept secret. ...and was developing WMDs which he might give to them, The intelligence suggested that Saddam had developed, and maintained, a primitive CBW capability. The application of the term "WMD" to this capability, as if it was somehow a nuke equivalent, was always a bit melodramatic, and there was no reason to suspect that this capability posed any danger to the US. and that containment was failing? (an assemssement that nobody disputed, before the war, btw) It was fairly widely disputed, as I recall. Whether containment was failing or not depends on your assumed objective. It was failing to remove Saddam, yes. It succeeded in reducing his military force to the point where he posed no meaningful threat.