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

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (153344)	12/4/2004 8:09:09 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Yes, in early 2001 Powell, the US and other countries tried to push the smart sanctions effort through, but its no surprise that push back came from other countries given the potential impact to Russian and French commercial interests. So much for the other option. If the US wanted to make sanctions work, it could have found a way, and probably would have, before 9/11. HOW? all attempts impacted Russian and French commercial interests - as you just said! The US could not make sanctions work by itself! What should Bush have done? You make it sound like he had some magic wand in his pocket, and he could have solved everything by just waving it. That idea is nuts. Listen, on the one hand it's true that the neocons thought that it would be necessary to do a regime change in Iraq by war. On the other hand, it was scarcely a new idea - regime change became official US policy in 1998 under Clinton. Sanctions had been extensively tried in the 1990s, and had extensively failed. Bush knew that, why don't you? Saddam had not only survived, he remained aggressive, he threw out the inspectors, he retained his programs and he proclaimed himself the Great Arab Victor on top of all that, and in recent years the Great Islamist Caliph as well. If the US had let sanctions fail and Saddam survive, Saddam would be the Number One Power in the Gulf today, and that's even without nukes. With nukes, it would go double. Is that the solution you favored? Did you really trust Saddam back then as much as you say now?