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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (300185)	8/16/2006 3:13:52 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1572026

Yes its a commodity, but that doesn't mean its not a vital resource, or that our access to it couldn't be limited But if he controlled Kuwaiti oil in addition to Iraqi oil, and was in position to possibly intimidate the Saudis in to going along with him, he would have a serious weapons to use against the US. He wouldn't even have to reduce his income stream. Keep selling the Iraqi oil, but take maybe half of Kuwait's production off the market and get the Saudis to take some fraction of theres away and watch the prices soar. I suppose we could have stationed a large number of soldiers in Saudi to keep their government from being intimidated, but that comes with its own problems. We get most of the negatives from the Gulf War (except about 300 KIA, and we probably get some of those as only about half were killed in battle), and none of the positives. Even if he didn't use the oil weapon the lions share of the extra income from Kuwaiti oil would have gone to strengthen Saddam's regime, including his military. Which brings us to the WMD program. Maybe Saddam got rid of any active programs some time after the cease fire agreement after the first war, but if there was no war there would have been no inspections and no eliminations of his program. He'd might have nukes by now. He would have one if in addition to no Gulf War, the Osirak bombing never happened. Saddam would also have an extensive chemical and bio arsenal.