"Miller, Jeffrey" wrote: > > 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. > > nitpick - its the size of California, not Texas ^_^
Heh. I was wondering if someone was going to nitpick me on that. :-) I have no idea of the real sq. mile numbers and just eyeballed it with my world map. > Say I agree - where on the list of countries with bioterror programs ruled by > despotic nightmare governments whould we start? N Korea? Pakistan? Iran? Any > number of former Soviet republics? Iraq is the best place to start: Why? 1) Iraq has the biggest motive to hate us and a leader proven to be willing to use WMD and also shown to be willing to take bold risks to get revenge (ie: Iraq's Bush assasination attempt) 2) Unlike those other countries you list, we have a signed peace treaty from Iraq in which they agree to give up all their WMD and stop all attempts to develop/procure them as a condition of their surrender. They have clearly violated this on numerous occasions, repeatedly, over many years (despite numerous UN demands, and many, many second chances to repent their ways). This, IMHO, gives us the right to take direct, strong action in Iraq that I would not justify in N Korea, et al., even though I am concerned about bioterror in those countries as well. In other words, I think we have an opportunity to put a firm stop to it in Iraq that we don't have in other places. > > > 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. > > Actually, I'm moderately serious - I think oil IS a huge, giant, important reason to > go to war! I just think that we should be _honest_ about it, either as a goal or an > outcome, instead of trying to cloak it in concern for the Iraqi people or security > for the US. I agree that the Gulf War was very much about protecting the oil status quo. But note that the US taxpayers/government did not profit monetarily from it. IIRC, Kuwait offered to reimburse the US for (some?) of its war costs, and the US refused. I don't know how true this is, but a friend of mine who fought in the Gulf told me that after the war, Kuwait offered to pay several thousand dollars to every soldier that participated, from every country that helped, but the US turned that down as well, but other countries had accepted the gifts.(I know my firend wouldn't lie, but it might have just been a rumor. Can anyone confirm/refute this?) As for this time around, oil cannot help but to be connected to the issue, because it's the Middle East, of course, and Iraq has lots of oil. And of course, it's in US national interests to protect its oil supply. But, those facts don't necessarily mean what some/many detractors claim, which is that the whole US goal/motivation here is nothing more than to steal control of Iraq's oil. I think that this war will cost us billions, which we will not recoup, just as we didn't in the GW. > > 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). > > Where abouts are you located, out of curiosity? I've noticed a trend amongst my > friends that people in BosNYWash, Texas, and LA seem to be concerned about this, but > the rest of the country (even Seattle, a likely "first strike" target of N Korea, if > it comes to that) aren't as fearful. Has anyone seen numbers, charts, graphs, etc > on geographic distribution of.. well, "fear"? Heh. I live in Arlington, Mass now, right next to Cambridge and Boston. And I grew up in Clifton, NJ, which is about 12 miles outside NYC (I could see the Empire State Building fthrough the window in my highschool homeroom). > For my part, I'm honestly not that worried about this. Yes, we need improved > security. Yes, we need more precautions. Yes, we should have better intelligence > and law enforcement practices... but I'm really, honestly, not gibbering under the > couch with fear. Saddam just doesn't have the resources, and has far too much > attention payed to him, to pull something like that off. What we /should/ be > worried about is actively belligerent nations like N Korea. Now /that's/ something > that's got me worried.. Well, I don't consider myself "gibbering under the couch with fear", either, but I do think it's a legitimate threat that we can eliminate while also having the side benefits of liberating the people of Iraq and bringing a democracy to the region (if we take the extremely necessary pains to do it right). As for N Korea, I'm slightly less concerned (but also less informed as I haven't paid as close attention to that situation). My understanding has been that while they are belligerent, their m.o. in the past has largely designed to induce other countries to "pay them off" with food, aid, money, etc, so I'm hoping this time around is more of the same rather than genuine aggression. Certainly Bush's "axis of evil" diplomacy doesn't help smooth matters here. I definitely don't have much idea right now about how to best handle this situation. The last time we paid them off,under Clinton, doesn't seem to have helped, so I'm dubious about the value of getting a new treaty from them in return for more food, money, etc. -bryon _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
