more
fishin
Thank you. I've always been a fan of the 'moderate' approach.
Tantor
Quote:Moral outrage at Saddam's evil is a justification for going to war. It just isn't a decisive justification. It alone is not enough to go to war. However, when America and its interests are threatened it is one more reason to throw on the pile of reasons to take over Iraq.
(Mandatory preface: I stand foursquare against evil and Sadaam is a bad guy) I think your response slightly disingenuous. Claims of the target's evilness always accompanies the drum beat for war or attack - as in "Jews are like rats", as in the claim forwarded at the beginning of the Gulf War that Iraquis had been busy pulling the plug on hospital incubators. At least be forthright regarding the wonderful facility such claims of High Evil always have for getting the folks at home to go rah rah and the boys about to die to do the "Let's gettem!" thing.
Regarding an earlier comment, I think your reasoning continues to be faulty re Sadaam and nukes.
Let's leave out, because you seem to want to, any possibility that the UN inspection teams and world intelligence capabilities could, for the next ten or fifteen years until he dies, constrain Sadaam from ever getting nukes.
So he gets a nuke. What is he going to do with it? Send it by Greyhound to Chicago? How is it going to help him gain Kuwait? He'll threaten to mail it to Chicago?
He could threaten Israel (which seems to me THE good reason for prevention). But, of course, if he used it there, or anywhere....big mushroom curtains for him.
If mutually assured destruction was a hindrance to the Soviets, you'd think it might work when he's got one and we've got ... 500, 5000?