Saddam's Economy of War: Why put up with sanctions, lose billions just to accumulate terror weapons

Wall St Journal ^ | 10-16-02 | HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

[SJackson]

Saddam is still the artillery buff he always was. German prosecutors produced evidence last week against two businessmen for shipping milling machines to Iraq that would enable the regime to make guns of a "caliber capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction."

[APBaer]

Ping

[blam]

"The worm finally turned last week, when the CIA chief sent a letter to Capitol Hill implying to some that we dare not move against Iraq lest Saddam strike back with a catastrophic terrorist attack."

Bump.

[tet68]

Time to cauterize the wound before the infection spreads.
Or as they say, "Apply to infested area."

[TXnMA]

Why put up with sanctions, lose billions just to accumulate terror weapons?

Simple; Sodom Hussein is insanely evil (or, as some would say, demon-possessed.) Recall, if you will, his speeches to the Iraqi people in which he portrayed the rout of his armies (wherein they were either massacred or surrendered en masse) as a great victory for Iraq. And who can forget his spiteful torching of the Kuwaiti oil fields when he realized he couldn't possess them...?

Insanely evil! (Note: I didn't say "evilly insane") -- no "insanity defense" for ol' Sodom...

TXnMA (No Longer!!!)

[The Great Satan]

He might easily mistake obsessive media coverage of events like the suburban D.C. sniper or last year's suspiciously experimental-looking anthrax attacks as evidence that the country is prone to dissolve in panic.

These idiots still don't get it, do they? Those weren't attacks. They were threats.

THIS IS NEXT
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX
YOU CANNOT STOP US

What part of this is so hard to understand?

[The Great Satan]

Indeed, the possibility that we were being sized up for a larger anthrax assault is one Washington has preferred to ignore in pursuit of the rogue-scientist theory

Publicly, they ignored that possibility. Not so publicly, they ordered 25 million doses of anthrax vaccine to protect the civilian population. If you're very smart, you might be able to figure out the reason for the disconnect. And then you might understand the origin of the "rogue scientist" claptrap, and the real purpose of "Operation Amerithrax."