Posted on 09/16/2002 5:17:48 AM PDT by 11th Earl of Mar
Searching for the Saddam Bomb
© 2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
By most opinion surveys, the majority that supports the president's resolve to invade Iraq has been shrinking. But were Saddam close to getting an atom bomb, four in five Americans would back a pre-emptive war.
Thus, the administration and the Brits last week have trumpeted a report by the International Institute of Strategic Studies on Iraq's progress and got the headline they wanted in the London Evening Standard: "Saddam A-Bomb 'Within Months'"
A look at that IISS report, however, suggests the Evening Standard is dishing up war propaganda as news. What does it say?
Saddam, almost surely, does not have an atom bomb. He lacks the enriched uranium or plutonium necessary to build one and would have to acquire fissile material from some other country. He is like a fellow who wants to cook rabbit stew in a country where there are no rabbits. And there is no evidence Saddam is in the market for enriched uranium or plutonium, or is even at work on a bomb.
However, if Saddam could acquire 40 pounds of enriched uranium, he could probably build a bomb of the explosive power of the "Big Boy" we dropped on Hiroshima. But even that is not certain. IISS conclusion: Saddam was closer to an atom bomb in 1991 than he is today. As for his chemical and biological weapons, Saddam's arsenal was largely destroyed by 1998, though a five-year absence of U.N. inspectors has given him time to rebuild his stockpile.
Yet, even if Saddam has these dread weapons, can he deliver them? His decimated air force consists of a few hundred Russian and French planes, generations older than the latest U.S. models. Most of his missile force was shot off in the Gulf War or destroyed by U.S. bombs or U.N. inspectors. Iraq may retain a dozen al-Hussein missiles of 400-mile range. But America now has drones that can spot flaring rockets at lift-off and fire missiles to kill them in the boost phase.
In every military category, then, Saddam is weaker than when he invaded Kuwait. IISS's conclusion: "Wait and the threat will grow. Strike and the threat may be used."
What the International Institute of Strategic Studies is saying is: Saddam is probably beavering away on weapons of mass destruction. But a pre-emptive war could trigger the firing, upon U.S. troops, of the very weapons of mass destruction from which President Bush is trying to protect us.
How did we get here? In 1998, Clinton, anxious to distract our attention from a lady named Monica, ordered air strikes on Iraq. U.N. inspectors were pulled out. Thus, we know less now than we did in 1998 about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
And Bush's bellicosity has probably convinced Libya, Syria, Iran and Iraq that their only safety from a U.S. "pre-emptive war" lies in a nuclear deterrent. If the "axis-of-evil" regimes we have been daily threatening are trolling petrodollars in desperation in front of the Russian Mafia to buy some second-hand Soviet nukes, would anyone be surprised?
Which begs the question: Has the Bush-Cheney shift in policy – asserting a U.S. right to launch pre-emptive war to deny weapons of mass destruction to U.S.-designated rogue regimes – created the most compelling of incentives for rogue regimes to acquire those weapons? Is the Bush-Cheney anti-proliferation policy the principal propellant of Islamic nuclear proliferation?
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?
Why, then, is the United States, having lost 3,000 people in a terrorist atrocity by an al-Qaida network that is alive and anxious to kill thousands more, about to launch a new war on a country that even its neighbors – Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia – believe to be contained?
What is this obsession with Saddam Hussein?
Hmmmmm, what could be another reason for defecting???
Like he was afraid for his life? Just like I've heard him say... nah, you're right, it's the disgruntled thing.
Yeppers you've convinced me. /sarcasm
Q: Good afternoon. Lance Corporal Jonathan Lee 2-11. (Cheers.) I wasn't so bright, so I wrote down all the questions I wanted to ask you. (Laughter.) Question number one: Do you feel that if we do go to war with Saddam Hussein that the president will consider fighting other countries in the axis of evil?
Next question: Do you feel --
Rumsfeld: No, no, no, no, no, no. It's late in the day. I'm going to answer them one at a time.
Q: Okay.
Rumsfeld: The circumstances of the countries in the axis of evil are notably different. The situation in North Korea is a dangerous one for the people of North Korea because they're starving. Many of them are trying to flee the country. And their circumstance is tragic. They have a terribly repressive regime, and it is the kind of a situation that could just kind of collapse internally.
The situation in Iran, a second country in the so-called axis of evil, where the president has again in my judgment done exactly the right thing by talking to the people of that country. It has a situation that's very different from either Iraq or North Korea. The women there and the young people there are in ferment. They're creating enormous pressures against the small tight group of clerics that are running that country with the Revolutionary Guard, and who knows? I can't -- I don't do predictions. But Iran strikes me as a place -- if you think how quickly it turned from the Shah of Iran to the Ayatollahs. It is not beyond imagination that it could flip back almost as rapidly. I believe that the people there are intelligent. They're industrious. They're being denied access to the rest of the world. Their economic circumstances is nowhere near what it would be if they were free to interact with the rest of the globe and make the kinds of contributions that they're being prevented from making because of the clerics that lead that country.
So I think it's a quite different situation and I think it would -- it, it's proper to characterize them the way the president did. It would not be right for those hearing that to assume that in each case, the circumstances are similar because they're notably dissimilar in my view.
Whole transcript on DoD website, here.
Pat is annoying
The Reform Party?
And Buchanan fits right in with the uninformed "ilk," too.
You've never heard of ships? You know, those big metal things that float on the ocean, and arrive by the hundreds at scores of seaports all around this country, many of them in the heart of major cities like New York, San Francisco, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans...
And their contents get inspected only *after* they arrive in port.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist (!) to pack a bomb in a shipping crate, and load it onto a friendly ship (or even just contract for delivery from a freight company), then trigger it when the ship arrives in port.
Nor would it be all that difficult to smuggle it in over the border somewhere and simply drive it down the freeway to any destination you choose. If Iraq can't think of any other way to smuggle it into the country, just hide it in a bale of marijuana, no one will ever find it there...
Your inability to figure out these elementary issues makes me concerned about the astuteness of your other pronouncements.
And the author of this article is a disgruntled speech writer - shall we not defend ourselves based on such rhetoric?
Yeah, almost everyone's got it figured out after 9/11. Of course the point is when Pat tried to tell the sheeple years ago he was crucified for it.
No, by wooden crate to the uninspected american seaport of your choice.
C'mon folks. He better have a real FLEET of these freighters ready because moments after #1 the asphalting of his pi$$ant country begins. He knows it, that's why he's been in his hidey hole for 11 years.
We're finally starting to see a little fruit from our efforts in the WOT this week. Let's not get diverted now.
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