Lamenting Lack of War: Poor Souls

Lamenting Lack of War

by Alan Bock
Well, as I predicted a few days ago, the release of the British hostages/captives/whatever has been quickly followed by lamentations and gnashing of teeth. As David Pryce-Jones put it on Thursday over at National Review Online, "now is the time for recriminations." What might have seemed like a success to people using mere common sense - the release of those British sailors and marines with no loss of life, no apparent admissions of dastardly breaching of territorial waters, no overt threats, no military action that would undoubtedly have had unfortunate repercussions and might have failed, no irreparable breaches - is viewed as a humiliating defeat for Great Britain, the EU, the U.N., the United States and civilization in general.

The usual suspects - although they generally refrained from writing much during the incident you can almost feel the palpable disappointment at the Weekly Standard and environs that there was no opportunity to drop bombs or unleash special forces - thought that this would have been the time to give the Islamic Republic a little whiff o' the grape. Poor dears.

Perhaps the most visible warmonger during the crisis was former (whew!) U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, who has hardly ever seen a potential war he didn't want the United States to start. He excoriated Great Britain and Tony Blair for not imposing "real pain, real economic sanctions." A week ago he was fulminating that Tony Blair's week-kneed and "inept" approach wasn't working.

A few days later the hostages were freed.

Newt Gingrich advocated military retaliation aimed at crippling Iran's oil production capacity. If the U.S. were so civilized as to force the Iranians to "go back to walking and using oxen to pull carts," he speculated, maybe they would overthrow the government. Ah, the joys of Leninist conservatism!

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In the 1639 treaty, the frontier zone was over one hundred miles wide, between the Zagros Mountains in the east and the Tigris and Shatt al-Arab rivers in the west.

Baldimo, the point is the insanity of the Newt Gingrich types who proposed bombing Iran back to the stone age just before things were resolved through diplomacy.

In February 2001, the BND compiled a further report and intelligence chief August Hanning told Spiegel magazine that, "Since the end of the UN inspections [December 1998], we have determined a jump in procurement efforts by Iraq," adding that Saddam was rebuilding destroyed weapons facilities "partly based on the German industrial standard".

According to the report:
# Iraq has resumed its nuclear program and may be capable of producing an atomic bomb in three years;
# Iraq is developing its Al Samoud and Ababil 100/Al Fatah short-range rockets, which can deliver a 300kg payload 150km. Medium-range rockets capable of carrying a warhead 3,000km could be built by 2005 - far enough to reach Europe;
# Iraq is capable of manufacturing solid rocket fuel;
# A Delhi-based company, blacklisted by the German government because of its alleged role in weapons proliferation, has acted as a buyer on Iraq's behalf. Deliveries have been made via Malaysia and Dubai. Indian companies have copied German machine tools down to the smallest detail and such equipment has been installed in numerous chemicals projects. [Note that such Indian cooperation with Iraq is something of a tradition: during the Iran-Iraq war India delivered precursors for warfare agents to Iraq - and later was found to have delivered quantities of the same materials to Iran. Baghdad's middleman at the time, an Iraqi with a German passport, founded a company in Singapore expressly for this purpose.]
# Since the departure of the UN inspectors, the number of Iraqi sites involved in chemicals production has increased from 20 to 80. Of that total, a quarter could be involved in weapons production.

Baldimo, sure. And if Blair and Bushie had not lied the world into war the Brits would not even have been there. Not to mention the "secret" war Blair and Bushie are fighting in Iran in partnership with Saddam's worst killers. http://infowars.net/articles/march2007/300307Iran_provocation.htm

Baldimo, yeah sure. I remember Hans Blix too who was doing the job this world needed. The war Blair and Bushie started on the ground is responsible for British troops killing and getting killed. As for Saddam he was hired as an assassin by the CIA back in 1959, was raised through the ranks, armed and funded by America. A real money maker for American arms merchants with a history of such betrayal. Arming madmen, getting rich off the blowback.