At 06:41 AM 4/8/2005 -0700, Nick Arnett wrote: >> What you are talking about is a slow >> and uncertain process. > >Compared to what? The speedy and certain process underway in Iraq???
I would say compared to North Korea, where the sorts of policies you advocate resulted in the DPRK constructing nuclear weapons right under our noses, and now we have a *real* problem on our hands there. Just imagine how history might have been different if Saddam Hussein had simply waited two or three more years or so, and asserted his claim to Kuwait *after* acquiring nuclear weapons - and then began to talk about securing the Muslim Holy Land as leader of the Arab people..... I think that the above was part of the core for the Iraq case - it isn't just what Iraq was capable of doing today. It was also the fact that once Iraq *does* manage to buy, build, or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons (from say, oh I don't know... North Korea!) , that at that moment in time it will be TOO LATE to do anything at all about it - or at least that do anything about Iraq at such a point without taking enormous risks. Moreover, there is also mixed in here the simple fact that in a post-9/11 world, that the collapse of a nuclear-armed totalitarian state carries *enormous* risks for the United States - and that puts the US in all kinds of binds. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
