At 12:25 3-9-01 -0400, John Giorgis wrote:
>At 11:43 AM 9/3/01 +0200 Baardwijk, J. van DTO/SLBD/BGM/SVM/SGM wrote:
> >No, I am arguing that the US should not use something that *might* happen as
> >a reason to back out of the ABM Treaty, because it would create a very
> >dangerous precedent.
>
>What dangerous precedent would that be? That nations might actually
>withdraw from Treaties that explicitly describe how to withdraw with them?
As described in an earlier post: other countries might do the exact same
thing: use any event that *might* happen sometime in the future as an
excuse to do anything they want, from killing possible dissidents to
building up a huge military force.
> >Further, as other posters have pointed out, a rogue nation that wants to
> >blow up an American city is more likely to smuggle a bomb into the country
> >than launch an ICBM.
>
>Yeah, and for all those posters pointing it out, not one of them has
>answered why Saddam Hussein is spending billions of dollars on missiles,
>and not billions of dollars on ships.
Saddam Hussein may be crazy, but is not stupid. Do you really think Iraq
would use ships they build themselves to smuggle a bomb into the US? I
think that Hussein is smart enough to figure out that any ship whose
origins can be traced back to Iraq will be subjected to an extremely
thorough inspection when it wants to enter a US harbour.
Jeroen
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