[Protagoras]

Please limit yourself to addressing the article and avoid attacking people who are of your own invention. Thank you for keeping the debate on a high level. I appreciate it.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

So who appointed you thread nanny, anyway? The entire premise is crap. Addressing the stench isn't going to make it smell any better.

[VaBthang4]

"Please limit yourself to addressing the article and avoid attacking people who are of your own invention. Thank you for keeping the debate on a high level."

LOL

(My Best Stuffy British Accent...)
Ahem..yes. Here Here my good Man!! Steady on...keep above the fray. These simpleton kaffirs couldnt comprehend their elbows from their...well, anyway...we must maintain the vigorous exchange or moronic assertion and cultivated folly.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Saddam's complicity in September 11 would present a good argument for devastating retaliation for an act of war, but there's no evidence that he was involved.

First point - no evidence provided to you. You're not in intelligence, nor are you in any decision making capacity which requires risking information sources in order to trust you. Big difference.

And the phrase "no evidence" is not the same as "didn't do it".

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Probably the best, at least the most fearsome, argument for overthrowing Saddam is the prospect of Baghdad developing weapons of mass destruction. Yet if nonproliferation should be enforced by war, Washington will be very busy in the coming years.

The problem is not just countries like Iran and North Korea, which seem to have or have had serious interest in developing atomic weapons. It is China, which could use them in any conflict with the U.S. over, say, Taiwan. And India, Pakistan, and Russia, which face unpredictable nationalist and theological currents, enjoy governments of varying instability, and offer uncertain security over technical know-how as well as weapons.

Considering that it only took a few years in the early 1940s for scientists without previous experience, computers, designs or advanced materials to conceptualize, design and fabricate a nuclear bomb, I find the forced absence of inspectors since 1998 (4 years ago) prusuant to surrender terms more than disturbing.

As for the others, the ones who have it, have it. We can't do anything about that, because the genie is out. My gut feeling is that the Iraqis are closest to having one done - and thte rest can be dealt with at a later date.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

If this debate is based on the article, the only "high level" is the result of cannabis. Got pipe?

[Nonstatist]

First, it would be extraordinary for Saddam to give up a technology purchased at such a high price. Second, Baghdad would be the immediate suspect and likely target of retaliation should any terrorist deploy nuclear weapons, and Saddam knows this.

Thats pretty specious reasoning. He wouldnt be the only suspect and he's pretty good at covering his tracks and taking "risks" (please note his record of enormous risk taking).

He's the one guy who might do this if it served his hegemonist interests and certainly, he cares not a whit about anybody, even his clan back in Tikrit. In this way, he is markedly different than most of the other despots in the world (Pol Pot being a notable exception)

In conclusion.. a risk taker, meglomainiac who has forfeited over 200 billion dollars in revenue through sanctions (sound like a sane guy to you?), and a guy who lost tens of thousands of men in an 8 yr war who turned around 2 yrs later and lost scores of thousands on top of that, and still he hears nothing but his own voice.

He answers to no one, and his revenue stream flows easily (unlike N Korea, for ex, which is hemmed in by China, etc) Sorry, guy, this tyrant has no peers. He stands alone (yet he's definitely vulnerable.. Go figure)