Saddam is not that mad, surely?

The Guardian ^ | Monday September 16, 2002 | Roy Hattersley

[finnman69]

He does not need to use it, he just has to threaten to nuke Tel Aviv or New York.

[GailA]

Is saddam insane or just plain evil? One does not have to be mentally screwed up to be evil. We assume because his actions are beyond our moral norms that he is insane, where he may be just pure evil.

[Hugin]

But that is not in itself sufficient justification for starting a war that will kill thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of innocent civilians.

Why is it that libs never weigh the loss of life from military action against the benefits of the same? For years now the libs have been saying that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children have been dying due to sanctions. The liberation of Iraq will end those sanctions and give the Iraqis real hope of freedom and prosperity for the first time since independence. Since tens of thousands are supposedly dying each month a war of liberation would save Iraqi lives in both the short and long term.

[NeoCaveman]

He is mad. And don't call me Shirley.

LMAO, you beat me to that comment, Shirley.

[Orangedog]

one cannot very easily dismiss the possibility of Saddam impulsively popping off a nuke (at Israel, most likely), in the expectation that the Islamic world would rally behind him.

I don't think that we could get lucky enough for Isreal to get rid of the Iraq problem for us. I really believe that if one ounce of nerve gas or one case of smallpox (not to even mention a nuke) pops up in Israel, and Iraq will cease to exist within minutes. If we're lucky, Sharon will give us a "heads-up" to get any people we have out of there and I would expect that notice to come AFTER the missiles have left the silo.

[mhking]

The Iraqi leader is not about to self-destruct by attacking the US!

Yes, he is that mad, and stop calling me "Shirley."

[Paleo Conservative]

[RichInOC]

We didn't use to think al-Qaeda was stupid-crazy enough to hijack one plane and turn it into a suicide missile, much less four.

[js1138]

Of course he's not mad. Psychopaths are not insane, just evil. He would never openly wage war against the U.S. But he could certainly train others to wage war against us, or against Israel.

[ExpandNATO]

Not that mad...

Now who was it that turned on the pumps and tried to make the Arabian gulf into a giant oil slick.

Who was it that blew up the oil wells in Kuwait in the hopes of creating the equivalent of nuclear winter?

[ExpandNATO]

Furthermore...

Who has been burrowing deeper and deeper into the earth and creating more and more tunnels? Who has been preparing more and more for an Armageddon scenario?

[VaBthang4]

Only a Liberal could say "Saddam is not that mad, surely?"

...well, maybe a Losertarian could but you get my drift.

[secretagent]

Saddam won't "launch" a nuke against the US. He'll use Al Qaeda as a surrogate to detonate it in the US.

Too risky. If the agents of attack get caught, then he loses big time.

He won't need to use it. He'll just have it and then bully the region around. Because although it's madness to use a nuke to initiate a strike, it's perfectly rational to use it when you're about to be attacked. Hence, none of his neighbors would dare attack Saddam.

More plausible. But distracts from the goal of getting Al Qaeda.

[secretagent]

Saddam is not mad enough to think that he could invade and annex Kuwait, surely?

We won't have April Glaspie this time around, and Desert Storm altered the tone.

[GHOST WRITER]

I suppose Sadam was not suicidal enough to attempt to asassinate an ex-President of the United States, George Bush. If he's crazy enough to do that, thinking he can get away with it, he's crazy enough to give weapons of mass destructions to Al Qaeda to use against us.