Brownback Says He is Getting More Calls Against the War than For

Hello! Hope all is well. Thanks for keeping me on the list. I don't get to check this every night now! Too sleepy! Late visits usually to the Dose!

Good - glad to hear it. I didn't really think you felt that way or you wouldn't be posting here - but - it was ironic that after hearing all the liberals ranting and raving, I read your post and my fingers took over.

Also, he is right that Saddam doesn't really represent a proximate threat to the United States itself

I'm not so sure of that. No, he doesn't have a misssle that can reach North America, and it could be a couple of decades before he could develop one. But what if he buys missles that can reach us from China, or possibly in a few years from North Korea? Out intelligence said NK wouldn't have a 2-stage rocket for several years. The next week they fired one off successfully. Not a missle that can reach N. America yet, but how long will it be before they do have one? N.K. is desperate for money and Saddam has billions of petrodollars stashed away. And of course there are still all those ex-Soviet rocket scientists who are now janitors or cab drivers and could use a few million dollars in exchange for their knowledge and experience.

OK, let's say all those scenarios are totally out in left field, which may well be the case, so let's consider another possibility. We are heavily dependent on ME oil. If our ME oil supplies were cut off our economy would go in the tank like never before. Suppose Saddam gets his hands on 3 or 4 nukes and a few rockets capable of delivering them within a few hundred miles. That would make it possible for him to overrun Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and every other oil producing nation and emirate in the ME under the cover of a nuclear umbrella. Of course we could do a rerun of Desert Storm, but would we put a large ground force into that area if we knew Saddam had the capability to kill 100,000 or more American servicemen with one lucky hit? How about a million Israeli civilians? Sure, both ourselves and Israel have the ability to make Iraq an uninhabitable desert full of glowing craters if Saddam fired off his nukes. But we aren't dealing with a rational human being here, and the old MAD theory isn't applicable. So would we risk another Desert Storm knowing a madman has his finger on the red button? Probably not IMHO.

I'm certainly no expert on the ME, nuclear weapons, rockets, Saddam, or much of anything come to think of it, so I may be completely off base on all this. But I still believe that it is far better to depose that genocidal maniac while it can still be done at relatively small cost in casualties and money. If we wait until he has the capability to make us pay extremely dearly to get the job done we may not be willing to pay the price. If that happens we will face a far more dangerous situation than we face now, or have faced anytime since 1942. So why wait to see what happens, when what could possibly happen would be disasterous beyond anything in recent history?

Well, you kind of took that sentence out of context, as the rest of my post essentially says the same things you just said.

Basically, that we probably need to take out Saddam in order to protect our interests and allies in the region.

If we can avoid war, and still accomplish those goals, of course we would do so, but the odds of that are rather small, I'm afraid.

Well, you kind of took that sentence out of context, as the rest of my post essentially says the same things you just said

You're right, that one sentence was a bit out of sync with the rest of your post. I think we're pretty much in agreement on what has to done, and it isn't pleasant to contemplate. Believe me, I'm no more anxious to see the U.S. in another war than you are.

I'm outta here, have a good evening.