by Englishman 53 Replies latest jw friends
The American President must have his war early this year so as to either ride the wave into a victorious re-election or have time to cover his tail if the war proves to be a mistake.
The lives of young men and women hang not on the wisdom of their leaders nor on Saddam's honesty but on the possible political gains and losses of the next election and of course, OIL! imo.
IW
OIL is another factor here
You bet it is...
The American President must have his war early this year so as to either ride the wave into a victorious re-election or have time to cover his tail if the war proves to be a mistake.
Don't count on that. Daddy Bush had his war a bit too early. He had the highest popularity rating of any president, ever, right after the Gulf War. Yet a year later he lost to Clinton. Early doesn't work. Late won't work either and if one bomb from Iraq is exploded over one of our friends he has lost and he knows it.
Inspectors are a joke. Saddam could be hiding WMD at grandma's house for chrissakes. They've had years to build underground bunkers or whatever to hide them. I for one, don't want to learn that Saddam has WMD when he decides to USE them.
TR
Hi LB,
You're right of course about the Daddy Bush thing but I think because of 9/11 the current President Bush has a greater chance of riding the patriotism wave of a war won into a re-election. Barring of course any surprise goofs on his part and the economy not taking a deeper turn for the worse than it already has.
IW
IW you're right about the patriotism thing that's going on still. He can ride that out. I honestly thought it would go back to normal by now. But at our highschool basketball games they not only play the star spangled banner these days they follow it up with the pledge of allegence. Before you know it we will be bleeding a goat all over the flag. It's getting under my skin.
TR has a good point. Saddam has had a loooooooooong time to build new places to hide his goodies. Our precious little Satalites cannot see through buildings :) Im sure he has them buried somewhere and I doubt we'll find them.
And as far as war is concerned, you dont send 200,000 people to the gulf for a picnic. Its on.....
Ok, let me show my ignorance of world affairs. What is the difference between Iraq and N. Korea? I mean, besides the oil. North Korea has said a lot more dangerous things recently, and yet there is not only no build up of arms, the US is trying to negotiate. Why?
North Korea has over 1 million soldiers poised at the border with South Korea. They could invade the south very quickly. The US wants to negociate because if war broke out, the north would win a quick victory with many casualties. Surely with time the US would win, but not at first. Thats why they want to negociate. North Korea is also different from Iraq. They seem to have nothing to lose, since their economy is dead. They also know that they are on the evil axis list. They know that they could be next to be invaded, after Iraq. The situation is more volatile, and dangerous there. Some wars don't cost too many american lives, but this one would cost many tens of thousands of lives. Not pretty.
my 2 cents worth
Edited by - jh on 13 January 2003 12:51:22
Happy,
KH has got the basics. By the time we got all of our goodies there, the North would have invaded months before!! I dont think the North would win do to logistics. They have no food and fuel so their advance would be short lived. However, they could cause massive damage to the south and being that they would have nothing to lose, they might launch a couple of Bio/Chem missles at Soul. Not good. Then there is the whole issue with the couple of bombs that the North has. Then you got China. China would not be very happy if we got rid of the North. The whole thing is pretty ugly. If we can choose our battles, pick the easiest- Iraq. Hopefully, the North will Collapse on its own and the whole thing will fix itself.
I say knock off all the hand-wringing, second guessing, and post-mortems. I say invite Saddam into exile. If he doesn't go, send him to his God. If we're going to be the world's policemen, let's be about it before a nuke comes in here on a container. Better Iraq turns into a glowing glass parking lot than one American city lies destroyed under a mushroom cloud.
Let's roll!!
francois
