Posted on 09/23/2002 9:51:37 AM PDT by areafiftyone
More than conceivable, when you consider what financial inducements it would make sense for the U.S. government to offer such a person.
No, because they would be members of the Iraqi military, secret police, and/or political leadership.
The scheme could be elaborated for extra security easily enough, e.g. by distributing the "launch codes" among multiple, independent people. You can play with scenarios like that -- say maybe five out of ten people have to send their codes for the whole thing to work, or whatever. But that's probably being too anal about it. I just don't think it's that big a problem. You don't get to be a dictator without solving this kind of carrot/stick problem all the time -- otherwise your own security guards would do you in long before you came to power.
Again, control problems were no obstacle to the acquisition of doomsday deterrents by the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. It only takes about five minutes to figure out "good enough" solutions to the problems involved, once you set your mind to it.
Unless the controller was already here. And instructed to act on his own initiative under certain circumstances...
The more thought we're applying to the situation, the more likely it seems that many of the risks can be suppressed.
But I just don't think we're necessarily going to be able to eliminate every single one of them. It's conceivable, but we'd best not plan on it, certainly.
All he has to do is hand over his germs to the terrorists
(in some third country)
and they will do the work for him, lots of fun for years to come.
It's the doomsday scenario. They get the germs after the war starts. (Or shortly before).
Well, he could do that, too. But the control issues are the same. There has to be a hand-off of control and, ideally, that hand-off has to occur even if Saddam is killed. So there is really no important difference between the two scenarios, except that in one case we get whacked immediately, and in other case we get whacked later (maybe). And, from GWB's standpoint, the calculation is exactly the same. In fact, it's exactly the same even if, in reality, Saddam's bluffing -- even if he has no capability to manufacture powdered anthrax in anything but gramme quantities. We have to assume the worst, because the worst is perfectly plausible.
Control-freak Saddam is not going to let any of those germs leave the country
until he knows for sure he is done for.
There are no sleepers now in the USA waiting for secret codes to be sent.
BS. We already know he has moved anthrax in-country. Safest place for it. No weapons inspectors will ever find it, here in the USA.
I can't believe they mentioned anthrax and exile in the same article.
Baby steps for the hard-of-thinking.
There is another possibility: They are already in the U.S., but not in the hands of the perps who will use them.
This is the logical equivalent of the "fail safe" mechanism on a nuclear bomb. All that is needed is to pass the necessary information on to the "right" people.
These people (the actual perps) will be extreme Islamists who can be counted on to use them. They will be members of various Islamic extremist groups (Al Qaida is only one of many), and will not even think of themselves as doing Saddam's bidding.
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