Quote:
Originally posted by Colin@Jan 22 2003, 07:42 AM
War is normal in the history of nations. The fact that wars are fought mostly "over there" and not here in the US is -well - it is a pretty fortunate combination of circumstance and timing. Saddam is a threat but not of the Hitlerian type. He may aspire to be a Hitler but he certainly does not have the military capability of WW II Germany nor does he have the military staff that Hitler put together. I am not afraid of Saddam in the sense that his capability of delivering a blow to the US mainland is near nil.
Might he have a few chemical weapons sitting around waiting to unleash on US troops or maybe Israel? Yes. Maybe a few but in the context of a war and compared to the history of war, I don't think it is significant at all.
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I disagree with the threat assesment of Saddam, I think the Hitler analogy is very sound: Saddam has not only threatened to annex neighboring states but has gone on through military force and attempted to get this done (Iran, Kuwait) His initial goals and many other Iraqi leaders' aspirations as early as 1949 was a greater TransJordanian Iraq coalition that reaches all the way to the West Bank. This is likely why Jordan is such good friend to US.
When you stop and think what it was that contributed to the stopping of the Hitler war machine, if you're american you will pat yourself on the back, but the lack of oil and 'materiel' was a critical factor. Such materials exist in plenty supply and will continue to be delivered to Iraq by anxious governments as the global oil supply shrinks and Iraq positions itself as the #2 supplier of crude by 2030.
Yes we can research alternative sources of energy but right now it really takes these fuels to run the existing war machines of ALL nations. This will continue to be so for the next couple of decades. Even after discovery or improvement of alternative energy sources it will still take decades to convert an already reluctant industry to these new discoveries. Things don't happen overnight in corporate industry. This should explain why oil si so important.
About the Bush/oil connection, you know at every election they talk about the campaign funds, last election Bush received the biggest in history I think. These people are capitalists, they don't donate to charity. You can bet your paycheck they expect returns, concessions, etc. There are many cups reaching for the global punch bowl. I any case Iraq and Kuwait share an oil well. A very large one in southern Iraq. Apparently Kuwait technology (Western investments including Bush family representation) is able to pump out more of this oil than the Iraqis can so this was key reason for the Kuwaiti invasion. There's your connection.
We really need to look beyond the Jan28 speech, the next elections or whatever and put things in perspective how they might/will unfold over the next few decades.
I agree with the second quoted paragraph that these finds of these warheads are relatively insignificant. Especially if you consider the no matter what, a self fullfilling prophecy has been created and Saddam will never forget how close he came, nor would he ever be allowed to live happily on a beach in Libya. That's fantasy, there would be dozens of assasins lining up. He knows it!
Ok that's enough of this, time for work!