Posted on 09/16/2002 12:30:06 PM PDT by EternalHope
Given the inevitability of a U.S. attack, will Saddam wait until we attack him, or will he strike us first?
The public is clearly being prepared for the possibility of a major attack on the American homeland with weapons of mass destruction. But we are being told very little about what the odds of an attack might be, or when it might occur.
The time has come to ask:
1. What are the ODDS of a major attack by Saddam Hussein on the American homeland?
2. WHEN is such an attack most likely to occur?
1. Personally, I think the odds of an eventual attack on our homeland are very high.
We know Saddam HAS weapons of mass destruction, and that he is willing to use them. The only question is whether he has been able to smuggle them into our country. We all know this is possible, and my guess is that he has.
If they are here, sooner or later they will be used. The question becomes: When?
2. It seems obvious that he will attack us no later than when we attack him, and possibly before. In other words, will he strike first?
The argument in favor of waiting is that we may be frightened into not attacking at all. Although he may have been able to deter attack in the past, it seems obvious that we are not deterred now. His deterence ability has ended.
He may still decide to wait, in the hope that we will be delayed by our own politicians (Dasshole comes to mind), or by the U.N. This possibility is less likely now than even one week ago.
If he decides to wait he also runs the risk that his own people will find a way to do away with him. He also knows that, if we know where he is, we will kill him at the start of the attack.
Since he is quite interested in his own survival, he may conclude that a first strike is his best shot.
A first strike with weapons of mass destruction is certain to result in the retaliatory destruction of Iraq, but not necessarily in Saddam's personal destruction.
A first strike could save him if:
A. It unified all Islam against us, thus denying us the bases needed to support the ground attacks we may need to finish the job;
B. Or, he could make his blow so strong that we would lose the ability to support a follow-up ground attack regardless of whether we lose our bases or not.
Neither of these seem likely to us, but it is his perception that counts, not ours. He is a megalomanic, likely to see the odds differently than would a normal person.
News reports indicate he will have nukes by Christmas, so he may decide to wait in hopes of even stronger weapons in the near future. However, there are also some reports that he already has nukes, making this a moot point.
An additional possibility is that he has access to pre-positioned sleeper cells, but that he has not yet delivered weapons of mass destruction to them. If so, intercepting these shipments is our best hope against attack. It would mean even more is riding on our homeland security program than we have been told.
What say you Freepers? What are the odds, and when?
The time has come to ask:
1. What are the ODDS of a major attack by Saddam Hussein on the American homeland?
2. WHEN is such an attack most likely to occur?
Here's Pat Buchanan's assessment.... for what it's worth
From hard evidence, what may we reasonably conclude? A) Saddam does not have an atom bomb or the critical component to build one, and is not known to be in the market for the uranium he would need. B) While he has chemical and biological weapons, his delivery systems have been degraded. C) He has had these toxins for 15 years and never once used them on U.S. forces, though we smashed his country, tried to kill him half a dozen times and have a CIA contract out on his head.
Why, if Saddam is a madman, has he not used gas or anthrax on us? Osama would – in a heartbeat. Probable answer: Saddam does not want himself, his sons, his legacy, his monuments, his dynasty, his army and his country obliterated and occupied by Americans, and himself entering the history books as the dumbest Arab of them all. Rational fear has deterred this supposedly irrational man. Has it not?
But not surprising. The West's history with the Mid East is simply recapitulating our history with the Far East. When the natives got uppity against the "Imperial Powers" in China (Boxer Rebellion and all that), we'd just send a gunboat up the Yangtse and shell a few villages, and that would be the end of the matter. When we got hit with a surprise attack, it was from the Japanese, who had zealously studied the West, adopted a market economy, and built an industrial state. The Chinese were simply too backward and befuddled to move against us. Plus ça change...
What time?
Friends of mine who know a lot more about this stuff than I do seem to think there will be some sort of attack on our soil unleased by Iraq. Maybe not directly carried out by Iraqi agents, but perhaps al Qaeda, backed by Iraqi intelligence.
I don't know whether there will be one or not, but as I tell my sons, in life, it pays to be prepared.
The question in my mind is: Is there anything we as ordinary citizens can do to help defend against/prevent such an attack?
Any ideas?
It goes well with coffee.
No one knows what is coming, but some of us are willing to stick our necks out and make a guess.
What is yours? What do you think Saddam will do, and when?
If Drudge is right, Saddam has just made his first move: pretend to allow inspections. If true, it will complicate our response and could slow things down.
(2) The anthrax attacks had all the earmarks of a trial run. A number of very thoughtful FReepers have observed that they might indicate a blackmail attempt by Hussein.
(3) As for the possibility that we could lose a city, think about it: If the planners of the 9/11/01 hijackings had concentrated their fire, so to speak, and crashed all four planes either in Manhattan or in DC, they could have taken out the heart of either city. If their tactical planning was better, they could easily have selected flights that left nearly simultaneously, and much closer to mid-day. It doesn't take much imagination to visualize the horror that would have resulted.
(4) The point being that we already came within a whisker of losing much of Manhattan or DC, and we have already been hit with a bio-attack. The President has made it clear that he believes worse will occur if we do not aggressively take the battle to the enemy.
(5) Immediately after the attacks, the President said we would go after both the individual terrorists and regimes which harbor them. We polished off Afghanistant quickly. So it's on to the next object lesson among nations. Think about it: of the other regimes that harbor radical Islamic terrorists, which one is the easiest for us to rally the nation, Congress and the UN for an attack against its leadership?
(6) The President has access to intelligence that we can only speculate about, and clearly what he knows leads him to believe there will never be a better time to go after Saddam than in the very near future. He obviously knows the risks to the U.S. and just as obviously is doing everything possible to minimize those risks. But I also have no doubt that he is haunted by the certain knowledge that last year's attacks could have been orders of magnitude worse.
Conclusion: we don't have any choice, folks.
More true than most will admit..
Sooner or later, Sadaam and his administration will have to be dealt with.... In the meantime, we continue to take harder and more damaging hits in lives, treasure and morale.
Far better to acknowledge that we will NEVER be able to live in peace in a world that contains Sadamm and his ilk - or radical Islamanazis.... We must attack now, before we become weaker and they become stronger...
Time to give WAR a chance.. War afterall, is the result of failed diplomacy, or the inability to negotiate with a man of no character.
Semper Fi
Anyway, this is not going to be the Battle of Stalingrad, it's going to be the liberation of Dachau.
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