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Donald Rumsfeld Press Conf. Did You Just Hear Him?
FOX NEWS | 9-3-02 | My Favorite Headache

Posted on 09/03/2002 10:22:21 AM PDT by My Favorite Headache

A question that was just posed to Donald Rumsfeld from one of the pool reporter's there at the Pentagon was "What proof do you have that Saddam is developing or has nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction?"

Rumsfeld-"That case will be made in the next couple of days and weeks for everyone to see"

Now between this comment that he just said and what Tony Blair said this morning....does it appear to all of you that game is on in the coming weeks for real?


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Free Republic; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: iraq; rumsfeld
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To: Mohammed El-Shahawi
One good reason is the one given above.

A better reason is in post # 100.

101 posted on 09/03/2002 2:55:57 PM PDT by Magnum44
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To: Magnum44
Bump
102 posted on 09/03/2002 4:19:46 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
...PM Blair will do the same on his side of the pond

Did you hear the one about the two blondes at the pond?
The first blonde hollers over to the other blonde:
"How do I get over to the other side?"
The second blonde hollers back:
"You're already on the other side!"

teeheehee

103 posted on 09/03/2002 4:51:05 PM PDT by GirlShortstop
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To: GirlShortstop
A recent sign up I see...welcome to the jungle.
104 posted on 09/03/2002 5:45:11 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
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To: crystalk
British Defence Secretary, Geoff [pron. Jeff] Hoon, will be giving an address at the University of Louisville, Ky. in a couple of days, I believe, in connection with a prolonged (ie about a week) visit to the USA, and he will be very near President Bush for most or all of that time.


I'm pretty sure I heard one of our local conservative talk show hosts here in So.Calif.say that President Bush will be in Louisville,Ky sometime this week! Can anybody confirm? Thanks.

105 posted on 09/03/2002 7:29:16 PM PDT by Lady In Blue
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To: LonePalm
no matter how tough the french speak, they always sound like sissies...
106 posted on 09/03/2002 7:40:10 PM PDT by teeman8r
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To: teeman8r


Question:
Who is this, is it:
(a) Tariq Aziz , foreign minister of Iraq, or
(b) David White who played Larry Tate in "Bewitched".

Trivia: Did you know that actor David White's son was killed in the Pan-Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland?
107 posted on 09/03/2002 7:56:32 PM PDT by Mohammed El-Shahawi
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To: Congressman Billybob
I agree. Bush will wait until after the elections. A Republican-controlled Congress (both houses) is the last thing he wants to happen.
108 posted on 09/03/2002 7:58:18 PM PDT by Edmund Burke
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To: Trust but Verify
We nuked 'em twice already, why wouldn't we do it again?
109 posted on 09/03/2002 8:00:34 PM PDT by Edmund Burke
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To: My Favorite Headache
I think 9/11 would be the perfect date!!
110 posted on 09/03/2002 8:52:02 PM PDT by CyberAnt
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To: Mohammed El-Shahawi
I think if anthrax was spread in 20 US cities (malls, subways, indoor sports centers) simultaneously over one week-end, a nuclear response would be essential. If there was no nuclear response it would make our nuclear arsenal almost worthless as a deterrent. Any third rate country who could spend a few million dollars making up some weaponized anthrax to be delivered covertly by covert agents could blackmail us. That can't happen. The threat of a nuclear retaliation must be made in advance, and must be shown to be a real threat.

This is true, but it may not be implementable.

One difficulty is that we may be unable to identify the attacker. Or the attacker may not be a country but a small, geographically dispersed group in hiding.

There's another problem that is very difficult to see one's way around -- the frog in boiling water syndrome:

If they slowly ratchet up the scale of their attacks, we may never retaliate. After all, it's already been proven that a small-scale anthrax attack, even in combination with a near-WMD-scale attack (9/11), is insufficient to provoke such a response. If the next anthrax attack kills 50 or 100, surely that's not enough to provoke nuclear retaliation. Then a third attack kills 2,000; of course that's not even as big as 9/11. Then it's 10,000. Will we be able to make the decision to kill millions in response to 10,000? It would seem not. Then, after that, 25,000 doesn't seem that much bigger than what we've already been subjected to. And so on.

Well, you get the idea. We become inured to larger and larger fatality levels; no one attack is so much bigger than its predecessor that it seems to be qualitatively different in such a way as to require total retaliation. And in a decade or two, we've lost.

It's just like the parable of the frog in boiling water.

If it turns out this way, the truth will be that we lost the war when we didn't retaliate for the first anthrax attack.

This is a very depressing scenario. It is why we absolutely must publicly identify last year's sender of anthrax, and, assuming that it was a military action, retaliate appropriately now.

111 posted on 09/03/2002 10:24:18 PM PDT by Mitchell
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To: ninenot
No offense... but there is a huge difference between the Soviet Union and Islamic militancy. And I'm not calling Saddam an Islamic militant. First of all, the Soviets were "rational". History proves time and time again that when faced with idealogy and survival, the Soviets chose survival everytime. As for Islamic militants... they are not rational. They are terrorists. They systematically target civilians for assault to inspire fear to reach their political, idealogical, and religious means.

Even that Saddam is not looking to spread the glory of Islam throughout the world, he is more of a self-serving Pan-Arabist. He wants to return the Arabs to their former glory, with he being the newest Saladin. He is not above using the Islamic militants to further his goal; neither are the Islamic militants above using him to further their goal.

There is a basic irrationalness to Saddam's pathology. It equals the same irrationalness that a Bin Laden has. Both Pan-Arabism and Militant Islamic Terrorists are bound up together in reaching their goals.

The Cold War is over... You cannot use it in this context. Nor can you say... hey, the Soviets didn't do it, so Saddam won't do it. Saddam is not the Soviets.

112 posted on 09/04/2002 5:25:48 AM PDT by carton253
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To: My Favorite Headache; July 4th
I can't find the betting pool thread, but I'm guessin Oct 16th. Jus a hunch.
113 posted on 09/04/2002 5:29:57 AM PDT by MissAmericanPie
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To: Eagle Eye
If the administration cannot convince congress that Iraq is dangerous enough for a formal declaration of war, then they should not be conducting war.

Daschle probably wouldn't let it up for a vote.

114 posted on 09/04/2002 5:36:34 AM PDT by Pure Country
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To: carton253
One who models himself on Saladin does not commit suicide. It has yet to be proved that Saddam is irrational. Megalomaniac, yes. auto-mono-maniac, yes. Irrational? Maybe.
115 posted on 09/04/2002 5:47:55 AM PDT by ninenot
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To: Lady In Blue; SLB; upchuck; RonPaulLives; one_particular_harbour
Bush is supposed to be here on Thursday (tomorrow) campaigning for Anne Northup at noonish in the Seelbach Hotel. Also, I heard on the radio that he would be greeting the Little League World Series champions too.
116 posted on 09/04/2002 5:53:32 AM PDT by Fred Mertz
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Comment #117 Removed by Moderator

To: My Favorite Headache
10-4, I agree
118 posted on 09/04/2002 5:57:53 AM PDT by The Wizard
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To: ninenot
I never said that Saddam would commit suicide or was suicidal. I said he was irrational.

What I was replying to was your summing up of the situation as: The Soviets did not use the Hbomb...

In a historical context, the Soviets were rational in the fact that they chose survival over idealogy everytime.

Saddam is not a Islamic Terrorist... so, he does not have the suicidal bent that they have.

Saddam is a self-serving Pan-Arabist who believes that he is the one who will lead the Arabs back to their former glory as a Saladin.

Furthermore, the two means (Islamic militancy and Pan-Arabism) have one end. The destruction of the West.

You cannot disconnect Saddam from the Islamic terrorists no more than you can disconnect Islamic terrorists from Pan-Arabists (even as one as self-serving as Saddam). If there is no survival bent in either means as there was in the Soviet, then you have a dangerous situation on your hand. Saddam may not commit suicide, but he is not above the wholesale destruction of others. The Kurds, the gas used during the Iraq/Iranian war. The firing of Scud missles into Israel, the ecological warfare in the oil fields of Kuwait... He is one of the prime movers in the PLO movement paying for suicide bombers and keeping the pressure on Arafat to continue terrorism against Israel (Arafat isn't being pressured against his will.) The abject brutality of his regime not only among the people, but in his own family.

You cannot use the Soviet behavior as the comparison for expected behavior in Arab politics. To do so is folly and will cost you.

119 posted on 09/04/2002 6:13:33 AM PDT by carton253
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To: r9etb
"But it'd be November or later before we did anything overt."

Do you say this because GW will make this a political decision rather than a military one? I ask because I'm hearing alot about how GW can't attack before November because it would be perceived as a gambit to influence the outcome of the election.

I say attack when ready, even if it's November 3rd.

120 posted on 09/04/2002 6:59:35 AM PDT by robertpaulsen
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