"Miller, Jeffrey" wrote: > > > The linkage between "regime change" and averting a war is sudden. > > > > I think I understand your point now - my guess is that it > > ties back to the point Jon and I were both making, which is > > that Saddam can continue to play the "don't cooperate - > > marginally cooperate - don' t cooperate - marginally > > cooperate" game indefinitely while he still works behind the > > scenes to obtain/develop WMD, only marginally hindered by the > > ineffective inspection process. > > Ah.. > > Do you consider the inspection process to be truly ineffective, even given its > monumental task and what it managed to achieve before we pulled out the inspectors?
Yes, I think that without Iraq's cooperation, the process is truly ineffective. In one of Han's Blix's speeches that I listened to, it seemed to me that he partly felt that way himself. (I say that because he stated they were not detectives whose job it was to track the WMD down and instead repeatedly stressed the need for Iraq's cooperation in doing so.) I agree that the inspections are a vastly monumental task, but I'm not sure what it's managed to achieve. My thought is that it's pretty easy to hide a bio-warfare (or even nuke) research lab in a country the size of Texas, when there's only a few hundred heavily-supervised inspectors to search the whole country, and where peoples' silence is easily bought with death threats and murder. Something's bound to slip through the cracks eventually. > > My question to you: What would it take for you to agree with > > having a war on Iraq? I.e.: In what circumstances would you > > see it justifiable? > > Why do you think I disagree with a war? :) Not only do I think wars are perfectly > legitimate means of accomplishing goals, I think that oil is a perfectly valuable > thing to spill blood over. I detect some sarcasm... :-) I disagree on the "war for oil" theory, but we've already debated on that a bit in a previous thread so I won't touch that here. > Speaking off-the-cuff - war should always be the last resort of a peace-loving > nation. It should be wielded as a credible threat, but not until other options are > played out - unless or until there is a credible, legitimate, and urgent threat that > can only be overcome in a timely fashion by the application of force. I don't see > that situation existing today. Fair and reasonable enough. My concern, though, is that the urgent/legitimate threat won't become apparent until a nuke goes off in Washington DC, or a plague of Anthrax hits LA, due to some terrorists supplied by Saddam (but untraceable back to him). -bryon _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
