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

To: Neocon who wrote (153749)	12/9/2004 1:40:58 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Right. You could maybe argue for desperation in 2001. A year and a half later, the "circumstances" were different. There was plenty of time to sort through the "state sponsorship" issue, except that W & Co. didn't want to sort through it, they wanted to start a war. They got what they wanted, and there we sit.

To: Neocon who wrote (153749)	12/9/2004 2:48:44 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

If the circumstances are intolerable enough, surmise will do. Obviously one doesn't want to make a mistake, but the error of toppling a tyrant for mixed reasons, some of which do not hold up, is slight compared to leaving him in place without ascertaining how much of a menace he really is. I suppose you are able to argue that determining whether Saddam was really a risk could not be done with less: - lives lost, on all sides; - money spent. I'm quite certain that 1/2 of current expenditures could easily have determined whether Iraq was a threat with next to ZERO lives lost. Probably a mere billion could have done it, instead, Bush will have spent 200 billion that we know of, much more on top of that, and up to or more than half a trillion dollars before the decade is out. No one can possibly argue that sorting out Iraq could not be done, cheaper. And without killing thousands of US and "allied" forces and tens of thousands of civilians and unknown thousands of combattants. The approach Bush has taken is NOT conservative, not by any definition.