Posted on 09/08/2002 11:41:52 PM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:57:00 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Vice President Richard B. Cheney said yesterday that Saddam Hussein is "actively and aggressively" trying to build a nuclear bomb, and two key senators disclosed that U.S. officials have warned the Iraqi dictator that he and his country face "annihilation" if he deploys a weapon of mass destruction.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
(Especially the one in Syria whose Arabic name means "The Valley of the Christians"--my bishop's family are from there. They've been fighting against the Jihad since the Mulsim scum broke out of the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century, and we who have only had to fight against it for a year or so now should honor them.)
Then again, maybe you don't have to figure that bit out.
Where were all these critics when Bill Clinton was wagging the dog with an unprovoked attack on Belgrade to oust Milosevic. That attack was certainly the most blatant war crime I have seen in my life time, and I have yet to hear any serious condemnation of it.
MR. RUSSERT: But if he ever did that, would we not wipe him off the face of the Earth?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who did the anthrax attack last fall, Tim? We don’t know.
MR. RUSSERT: Could it have been Saddam?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t know. I don’t know who did it. I’m not here today to speculate on or to suggest that he did. My point is that it’s the nature of terrorist attacks of these unconventional warfare methods, that it’s very hard sometimes to identify who’s responsible. Who’s the source? We were able to come fairly quickly to the conclusion after 9/11 that Osama bin Laden was, in fact, the individual behind the 9/11 attacks. But, like I say, I point out the anthrax example just to remind everybody that it is very hard sometimes, especially when we’re dealing with something like a biological weapon that could conceivably be misconstrued, at least for some period, as a naturally occurring event, that we may not know who launches the next attack. And that’s what makes it doubly difficult. And that’s why it’s so important for us when we do identify the kind of threat that we see emerging now in Iraq, when we do see the capabilities of that regime and the way Saddam Hussein has operated over the years that we have to give serious consideration to how we’re going to address it before he can launch an attack, not wait until after he’s launched an attack.
Amazing how that was/is reported/shelved. Clinton perpetrated the slaughter of people who bore us no ill will for the purpose of getting his BJs off the front page. It worked and he has NEVER been called on it.
We should air drop him over Belgrade.
Since the administration is not yet making the case publicly, I have to wonder if this was an accidental slip.
The anthrax/Iraq connection is the strongest political card in Bush's hand. Given the Dems' decision to subtly filibuster the "debate" on Iraq, I wonder if President Bush will decide the time is right to play it. Perhaps in a speach on Wednesday?
Instead, it carefully raised the issue without drawing any conclusions. Interesting.
BTW: Based on the clumsy way the FBI has handled Hatfill lately, I doubt he was privy to any attempt to use him as a temporary diversion. Based on what we see right now, some heads at the FBI should role.
Half life is of no consequence for uranium and plutonium. Tritium is another story -- If H-bombs exist without a plutonium trigger, as I've heard, they would truely be of the use it or loose it variety.
But a dirty bomb set off in a large city would be a major disaster.
I personally think that Islam has killed itself on 9-11. The more people examine it the stupider it looks. The more terrorist acts, the more people will examine it.
Not true. Israel worked with the French, who agreed to pool nuclear research with them after the Suez crisis, when they were "dropped" by Eisenhower's threat to withdraw the US nuclear umbrella (leaving them vunerable to the Russians, who duly rattled sabers their way), after their joint move against Egypt.
And the French did not simply get it from us or the Brits. They had a long research project, with testing in the western Sahara and later in the south Pacific, De Gaulle's insistence on an independent nuclear deterent ("force de frappe"), etc. Israeli scientists worked in French labs and shared in the results.
France and India are the two confirmed cases of independent success, not simply based on prior espionage. It should also be said, however, that the tech for it and knowledge of the engineering difficulties involved have become more widespread over time.
For what it is worth...
But is Bush going to tell the UN, "Ha, ha, we lied, we knew it was Iraq all along, that rogue scientist stuff was just to buy time"? He could do that, but I can think of no precedent for it. It's true that this is an unprecedented situation, but it's still hard to imagine. Something more gradual and with more built-in ambiguity is more likely, to my mind.
I see three things in the works that will be relevant to how perceptions change. The first is the Hatfill thing. This is moving more slowly than I anticipated, because his firing sort of puts the ball in play again. However, the reaction to that firing has also been good from the standpoint of retiring the rogue scientist theory: almost every big newspaper in the country, including the Washington Post, has now come out with an editorial condemning the DOJ for persecuting this man. The Weekly Standard has devoted a cover story to debunking it, and Kristof and Rosenberg seem to have gone to ground. But it's not over yet.
Then there is the strangely-timed return of the feds to the AMI building. The search is still ongoing, under a warrant which expires on September 11. Local news reports quote the FBI as saying that the search is going "very well," but they are refusing to comment on whether they have the letter that killed Bib Stevens. So, we are going to hear something at the end of that search, presumably. The question is, what?
And there is the Prague story. Cheney brought it up on MTP, but that's clearly not the last we are going to hear about it. I don't think they're bluffing when they say it "holds up." I think the administration knows that hand-wringing about nuclear capabilities isn't going to be enough to sell the public on what they believe needs to be done. The phase we are in now is preliminary atmospherics. Bush's speech to the UN will probably be more of the same.
They are in no hurry to get this over with. Up to a point, the longer this is stretched out, the softer the blow to the American psyche and the economy, the worse the stress on Saddam and his people, and the more time we have to physically prepare our defenses for the confrontation. So don't expect the tension to be relieved any time soon. I'm still on tenterhooks myself.
The whole idea of deterrence is that the weapons, nuclear or otherwise, will be used if a country is attacked. This idea falls down without a reliable chain of command system.
What makes us believe Saddam will depend upon the same westernized command structure he had during Gulf War 1? If I were Saddam I'd have been recruiting True Believers to run my war machine for years now, and I wouldn't expect the Muhammadans to behave rationally.
Absolutely. He's after the US and Israel. He's also still after Iran, but I don't think at this juncture Iran'll be his first target.
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