Dan Minette wrote:
Which suggests to me that the Bush administrations approach to the problem of WMDs is fatally flawed. Of course you know that I think it is not only flawed but that the Bush policy's long term effect will be more enemies more terrorists and more WMDs.There is a great deal of difference between the situation with N. Korea and Iraq. At the present time, the government of Iraq has minimal ability to inflict casualties on the citizens of other countries, while North Korea has a tremendous ability. Just with conventional weapons alone, they can kill tens of thousands in a few hours. They have thousands of pieces of artillery trained on Seoul, ready to kill if attacked. Further, they probably have 1-2 nuclear weapons, and IIRC, their missles can now reach Tokyo.
Violence and intimidation might be successful short term measures, but they will ultimately fail.
So what is the point of dealing with Iraq the way we are if the idea is to contain the spread of WMDs? In fact its not much of a puzzle at all because the motivation isn't WMDs or terrorism, its oil. Nothing else makes any sense whatsoever. You can go on all you want about how we wouldn't control the oil fields if we conquer Iraq. Hooey. The Bush admin is even saying that oil prices will be lower post conquest:I was talking about being hypocritcal about Iraq. After all, Bush did include NK in his "axis of evil", but until/unless they drive him to it by forcing their WMD down his throat, he has no obvious intention of starting a war in NK.In a real sense, it's been too late for North Korea for years. We'd have to accept tens of thousands of civilian casualties in South Korea at a minimum. IIRC, Doug quoted some estimates of up to a million casualties in a war.
"The Bush Administration's only attempt to quantify the economic costs of war was provided by White House economist Larry Lindsey. Mr Lindsey said the liberation of Iraqi oil fields would drop the oil price by boosting oil production by 3 to 5 million barrels a day."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/26/1040511133257.html
Doug
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