War in the Middle East:If it Comes, Get Ready for the Worst

War in the Middle East:
If it Comes, Get Ready for the Worst
by Joseph D. Douglass, Jr.
January 22, 2003

Assessing what will happen if and when American military forces invade Iraq presents the analyst with a formidable challenge. Very little factual information has been released. The Bush Administration is holding their cards close to its chest. The special interests that influence the press and news media are beating the war drums and doing their best to ratchet up anxiety. The news itself is dominated by psychological operations, or psyops as it is called in the Pentagon, as all the various parties work to intimidate the others.

As an example of how pro-war, one-sided (and misleading) the news commentators are, a recent news item on expected casualties compares the situation today with the results of the Gulf War in 1991. The “experts” say they expect the war to be even shorter because there are so many more precision-guided munitions. Accordingly casualties and collateral damage will be low.

A few “wild cards” that could upset the calculations are mentioned but quickly passed over. These wild cards include no use of chemical warfare (CW) agents, no use of biological warfare (BW) agents, and no urban warfare (no fighting in Baghdad). There is no known basis for expecting any of these provisos to hold and strong reasons for expecting exactly the opposite.

There seldom is any mention of the use of “deception and denial” practices, such as the use of cheap decoys to draw the fire of precision-guided munitions. This significantly complicates targeting and greatly reduces the effectiveness of the precision guided munitions. Iraq is known to have been incorporating these techniques into its defenses since the 1991 war.

Perhaps the most glaring omission is any significant consideration respecting 1) a new wave of terrorism against the United States that should be anticipated following a U.S. attack on Iraq and 2) the consequences of an Iraqi attack on Israel. The damage associated with either of these two consequences could dwarf the estimates of damage and casualties generally associated with a war in Iraq. The potential for terrorist attacks against the United States in response to an attack on Iraq should be of very real concern to all Americans. We remain exceeding vulnerable to terrorist attacks, notwithstanding all hype associated with the new Homeland Defense Department. As will become evident below, the threat is not just Iraqi terrorist attacks but those by any number of a large assortment of terrorists and sponsors sympathetic to Iraq and/or antagonistic towards the United States.

Should an invasion take place, great fanfare will be made to portray it as a coalition effort in which 40 plus nations are now believed to have pledged their support to President Bush. However, no effort is being extended to ask what constitutes an ally or what the motivations of the various “coalition” members are, or how many were blackmailed or bribed into joining and how useful their contribution will be, aside from enabling President Bush to speak of the extensive international effort that has joined together in the war against Saddam.

I hope the experts are right; that the war will be short and not involve much destruction. However, I cannot but help fear that the optimistic prognostications merely represent the group think that seems to characterize the Bush Administration and, with it, an absence of conflicting or pessimistic views. As explained in Woodward’s Bush at War, only positive attitudes are allowed. There do exist, however, strong views that conflict with the official line and serious concerns respecting the advisability of going to war against Iraq and where that action may lead.

From my perspective, leaving aside the serious omissions identified above, there are several aspects that have received only minuscule attention and deserve much more: the nature of the threat, the demise of U.S. internal security and how easy it will be to repair the damage, problems that beset our own leadership, and the opposition’s goals.

Before going to war, it is important to objectively study the threat. In the case of Vietnam, there was no realistic assessment of North Vietnam, its motivations, convictions, and staying power. Nor was there any appreciation of the nature of its support, which included China, North Korea, the Soviet Union, and all the Soviet East European satellites. The Best and the Brightest, as those who ran the Vietnam War were described by David Halberstam in his best selling book, knew it all (in their minds), but were disastrously short in humility and wisdom. The U.S. strategy, to the extent it existed, was seriously flawed by an unrealistic assessment of the threat and an arrogance that made military experience and expertise largely irrelevant.

We appear to face similar problems in the wars on terrorism and Iraq today. There is no evidence of a reasonable or objective understanding of the threat. The threat is not just Iraq (that is, Saddam Hussein) or the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. They are important but minor players in the overall scheme. What is missing is the overall scheme, who the players are and how they fit together.

Since 1955, international terrorism has not been just a bunch of independent actors, as repeatedly described in official documents over the past decade. U.S. intelligence and leadership seem to have had a most difficult time understanding the real world, which contains few, if any, independent actors.

International terrorism has been, and still is, state supported. The principal sponsors and supporters are Russia and China. (For a excellent brief discussion of this, see J. R. Nyquist, “The Enemy Behind Our Enemy.” This is not mere hypothesis or unjustified assertions. It is fact, although admittedly a politically incorrect fact. Other nations heavily involved are Syria, Iran, Yemen, North Korea, Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and a whole host of African countries like Libya, Algeria, and the Sudan.

As an indication of how widely terrorism has spread and the threat the United States faces when our leaders talk about war on terrorism or war on Iraq, there is now an Anti-North American Revolutionary [Terrorist] Movement in Latin America. It’s center appears to be Venezuela. It is supported by Cuba and Brazil. Terrorists from Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Iran, Iraq, and Al-Qaeda are involved. The terrorists are Marxists and their roots go to Russia (specifically the GRU) and China. Their activities have increased over the past year, with coordination trips to the Middle East and reciprocal visits to Cuba and Venezuela by Middle East terrorist group representatives. They have ready access to the United States heartland through their drug trafficking. Manufacturing or smuggling in large quantities of toxins and biological warfare agents would be simple and involve minimal risk of detection.

The threat of international terrorism and especially the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is also incomplete without recognizing the close ties that join international terrorist operations with narcotics trafficking and international organized crime.

Traffickers and terrorists are almost indistinguishable. Narcotics trafficking networks were even established with the plan to use their smuggling mechanisms and networks for inserting saboteurs or terrorists and supplies (such as biological and chemical warfare agents) when needed. The idea of constructing a strategy to effectively wage war on international terrorism without including international narcotics trafficking in the threat is, at best, naïve.

Continuing, narcotics trafficking is the primary component of international organized crime, and the financial money laundering networks that service organized crime and narcotics trafficking also service international terrorism – not 100 percent, but close enough to make any threat assessment incomplete if it does not include the narcotics trafficking and organized crime financial apparatus as part of the threat. There is no indication that any of this is part of the thinking that underlies the war on terrorism or nature of the threat that should be considered when planning a war on Iraq.

To better appreciate the importance of these dimensions of the threat, the annual revenues of international organized crime is estimated at over 2 trillion. (A 1999 U.S. interagency study put the range of their money laundering each year at no less than $900 billion and possibly in excess of $2 trillion.) This has led to massive corruption of international banking, finance, top law firms (most of which are tied to banking), governments, intelligence services, law & order apparatus, the courts, businesses, and, of course, politics around the world, including or especially the United States. The top money laundering countries in the world are the United States, Israel, and Great Britain, followed by Russia and a whole host of smaller countries around the world. This has been going on for over forty years. Its size has been over a trillion dollars a year for over a decade. The only reason why it is so large and successful is that it is politically protected.

Terrorists, supposedly operating at arms length from the respectable agencies of power in international organized crime, are often used as “enforcers” when necessary to “reason” with important political, government, or other officials. When President Bush made the financing and money laundering links that support international terrorism a priority target, he was taking on, witting or unwitting, the two trillion-dollars-a-year apparatus that also services international narcotics trafficking and organized crime. The financing structure is not just a bunch of charitable institutions collecting donations and dispensing funds. They are just a minor part of an immense criminal operation that is covertly linked to terrorist groups.

It should be readily evident that many of our “allies” in the war on terrorism and members of the coalition being formed to justify U.S. actions directed toward regime change in Iraq are more strongly associated with the threat than with the United States. It is equally evident that most of the weight in the threat would like to see America destroyed or, at the very least, “cut down to size.” In the wake of 9-11, suddenly the real and present possibility of cutting America down to size had to have become evident in the minds of most of the key players in the threat. This may be one reason why there have been no serious follow-on attacks. The terrorists could have been advised to “cool it” for a while. Those at the top of the power structure may have been surprised at how effective the attack was, and what that meant to them in the interdependent economic structure they had been putting together. They first had to reason through how to position themselves so that they would not get burned too badly when terrorism resumed, or, better still, be prepared to capitalize on the economic chaos anticipated to accompany more serious attacks on the U.S. homeland in response to a U.S. attack on Iraq.

U.S. internal security is what the U.S. war on terrorism and, to a certain extent, the possible war on Iraq is all about. With 9-11 and the follow-on anthrax attack, U.S. vulnerability suddenly became an issue. How dare they strike us! How dare they embarrass those responsible for our nation’s security.

This is also a very serious aspect of the possible war on Iraq that is almost never discussed: our invading Iraq might serve as a trigger for terrorist attacks on America by a wide variety of our enemies as indicated in the above “threat” discussion.

Presumably, this is what the new Department of Homeland Security is about: defending America against terrorist attacks. What has been missing in the discussion respecting this new department is “Why? What happened to U.S. internal security?” and will the new Department fix the problem, what ever it is, which the administration evidently does not want the public or Congress to understand.

Understanding what happened to U.S. internal security also should be part of a threat assessment because what constitutes a threat is highly dependent upon the state of our defenses – and, U.S. internal security is now at low tide.

U.S. internal security was, in essence, destroyed by the Presidential Administrations and Congress during the 1970s. The base of the destruction was laid earlier, but the coupe de grace was executed in the 1970s.

For example, in 1974, the FBI opened or reopened more than 55,000 cases of “subversives and extremists.” The implementation of the Privacy Act coupled with the Freedom of Information Act led to many lawsuits against FBI agents conducting background security investigations and maintaining surveillance on political extremists and terrorists. As a result, by 1976, the number of FBI investigations had dropped to 20,000. Then, guidelines promulgated by President Ford’s Attorney General, Edward Levi, made it illegal to conduct surveillance on people who were not known to have committed a crime or about to commit a crime. One year later, the number of active surveillance cases had plummeted from 20,000 to 102, and by 1982, the number had fallen to 14: four organizations and 10 individuals!

In 1969, the White House directed that all intelligence files containing names of U.S. citizens be destroyed. Those files were indispensable in many background security investigations. Between 1973 and 1979, the number of FBI background security investigations also fell from 21,000 to 50! During this time frame, Congress cut Defense Department Investigatory Services by 27 percent and in 1981 their backlog of investigations had grown to 83,000. In effect, background investigations for all but the most sensitive posts were dispensed with. The doors for wide spread infiltration were opened wide.

By the end of the 1970s, terrorists and subversives were able to act with near impunity on U.S. soil. The Attorney General’s list of subversive and Communist groups was thrown out the window. It is no accident that there was a flood of foreign intelligence agents and terrorists into the United States. 1979 was the year of the Mariel Boat lift from Cuba in which hundreds of Cubans fled to the United States. The major portion of those Cubans admitted into Miami were AIDs carriers, criminals, and intelligence agents (including terrorists and drug traffickers). Cuba, it is important to note, was a Soviet satellite and a major training and coordination center for international terrorism. It is likewise no accident that terrorists regarded the United States as a preferred rest and recreation site because there was no internal security, and that the 1980s became known as the decade of the spy because of the massive intrusions into and compromise within U.S. national security agencies. In the 1990s, operations of foreign intelligence services were even more disastrous that they had been in the 1980s decade of the spy. Neither the White House nor the Congress seemed to care.

The influx of terrorists, intelligence agents, sabotage specialists, and drug traffickers was further facilitated by the gradual tearing down of immigration controls that had begun in 1965. The flood of immigrants was supported by the White House and key members of Congress, and still is. Estimates on the number of illegal immigrants roaming the American streets and coffee houses ranges from one to five million, not counting all those given amnesty and citizenship because the magnitude of the numbers of illegals was so embarrassingly large. How many have been deported in the wake of 9-11? Have any been deported?

The important point in all of this is that the internal security apparatus that was destroyed in the 1970s (and continuing in years after) represented an enormous cumulative investment – people, files, knowledge, skills – painstakingly developed over many years. It cannot be easily or quickly recovered. It will take a long period of time and all those who have blended into our culture, including those whose files were destroyed by direction of the White House in 1969, may never be recaptured by those now trying to identify terrorists and subversives.

How many are now living and enjoying life in the United States while waiting for their assignment? Even internal security specialists have no idea. The number would have to exceed 20,000 (a minimum of 5,000 each from the Middle East, Russia, China, Cuba and 10,000 or more drug traffickers with terrorist roots) and could reach as high as 100,000 or more.

Will the Department of Homeland Security solve this problem? Impossible. Their main effort will be to integrate a hodgepodge of agencies into one. Moreover, none of the key intelligence agencies are part of this integration. Most important, the White House is unlikely to let the CIA, which reports directly to the White House and is often used as a mechanism for implementing White House interests that the White House wants kept secret, be placed under any other agency.

As a further indication of the dilemma we face, the destruction of U.S. internal security during the Ford and Carter administrations also contributed to the enormous expansion of narcotics trafficking and organized crime in the United States, most of which is directly attributable to operations of foreign intelligence services who are also major supporters of international terrorism. (Extensive details on the Soviet and Chinese narcotics trafficking intelligence operations are presented in the book Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America, published by Edward Harle Ltd., in 1999.) The growth in narcotics trafficking and organized crime in turn has led to the unavoidable and unrelenting parallel growth of corruption and immorality within the political, business, finance, government, legal, and law and order communities of the United States. Corrupted and compromised people can be called upon for assistance by terrorists and their supporters when necessary. For example, efforts within U.S. Customs to stem the flow of cocaine into the United States during the Reagan Administration were curtailed because the cash flow generated by the cocaine was the main sources of dollars used to pay the interest on the Latin American debt bomb owed to the New York banks.

Until the United States looks back and asks, “How did we get in this predicament?”, nothing the United States does is likely to have anything other than at best a temporary effect.

Are WMD in the hands of Iraq a problem to the United States – today? If there is a regime change in Iraq, will that solve the problem? It should be apparent that the answer is no. After Iraq there is Syria. Then Iran. Then North Korea and China. How about Russia? President Lula of Brazil has indicated his intentions to resume Brazil’s nuclear weapons program. Lula is a committed Marxist, good friends with Chavez (another Marxist and President of Venezuela) and Castro.

There are now nearly two dozen nations, mostly of the terrorist variety, that are working on biological warfare agents, which in certain respects are a more serious threat than nuclear weapons because they are cheap, easy to smuggle into the United States, may be impossible to trace, and can kill people by the millions or be used in very selective operations to disable individuals or organizations.

Anthony Sutton described the heart of the problem most succinctly in the title of his book, The Best Enemy Money Can Buy. It is hard to identify a threat (previous discussion above) that has not been aided significantly by U.S. White House direction. This includes the Soviet Union, its satellites, China, and so on. The Soviet Union likely would not have survived through the 1920s if not assisted by the White House and U.S. industry. Nuclear weapons technology was first proliferated to the Soviets during Lend Lease by the White House. The man in charge was Harry Hopkins, who we now know to have been a Soviet agent. Nuclear weapons materials were reportedly provided to Israel in the mid-1960s at White House direction through the CIA.

The decision to move U.S. capital and industry overseas was made in the White House in 1961 as part of the revision of the Basic National Security Policy that was under the direction of White House Advisor Walt Rostow, who was denied a security clearance because of his socialist views and communist connections by the State Department and Air Force (See the Ordeal of Otto Otepka by William Gill).

Massive transfers of technology to the Soviet Union began in 1972 as part of SALT I. Suppression of intelligence on Soviet activities was also stepped up during Nixon-Kissinger administration, to avoid upsetting détente and arms control initiatives, and their China initiative opened the flood gates to technology and industry transfer to China.

Information on Soviet (and Chinese) drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism was buried during just about every post-1960 U.S. administration. This was in support of long-standing White House policies not to embarrass or confront the Soviets, although in several cases the subverting of information on sensitive Soviet operations would seem to have been done as an internal CIA initiative with no information provided to the White House. While the role of the Soviet Union as the granddaddy of terrorism began to surface during the Reagan Administration, this was all changed the instant the Bush Administration came into being and intelligence collection directed toward the Soviet Union and its “successor,” Russia, was severely cut back.

Today’s leadership does not seem any more interested than past administrations in recognizing let alone meeting the threat to the United States. A classic indication of the problem is contained within the book Bush at War by Bob Woodward. He describes an NSC meeting at which CIA director George Tenet in discussing the anthrax attack recognized the possibility of state sponsorship – because the anthrax was too sophisticated for typical terrorists. Vice President Cheney’s assistant, Scooter Libby, cautioned against any mention of state sponsorship and Tenet quickly said he had no intentions of raising the issue. Vice President Cheney, who chaired the meeting in the President’s absence, quickly agreed: “It’s good that we don’t because we’re not ready to do anything about it.”

Once the door to state sponsorship is opened, the implications are nearly all “politically incorrect” – embarrassing not to mention frightening. Who would want to suggest that those most capable might be Russia, Cuba, and China – even Israel? The number of biological warfare facilities in Cuba today staggers the imagination. Moreover, it is not a recent phenomenon. Cuba was a participant in Warsaw Pact biological and chemical warfare research, development, test, and operations beginning in 1961. It operated covertly through Czechoslovakia. Cuban chemical warfare instructors stated in 1984 that Cuba had sufficient chemical agents in the United States to poison 30 percent of the U.S. water supplies. Today, they could launch a massive covert biological warfare attack on the United States and the chances of U.S. intelligence being alert to the possibility or being able to diagnose what was happening has likely not changed since the anthrax demonstration of October 2001.

This is not being alarmist. The only truly alarming part of the biological warfare threat is the efforts of U.S. intelligence at White House direction to sweep the biological threat under the rug since 1969 and the lack of U.S. interest in advanced biological warfare capabilities as the Russian biological warfare expert, Ken Alibek, learned after he defected to the United States. His experiences are described in his book Biohazard (See).

The other leadership practice that has been evident for over a year and that undermines the decision-making process is the combination of group think and an evident lack of tolerance for conflicting opinions. Complicating this practice is an extreme sensitivity to the release of information that is not carefully scrubbed and scripted. This is most evident in the iron cage place around information respecting 9-11 (who knew what and when) that has culminated in the absurd creation of a committee to investigate the issue.

Those professionals who have been involved in command operations or intelligence know that immediately after a major crisis or failure, like 9-11, there are high-priority efforts at the top of all agencies to understand what happened when information is fresh in people’s minds so that internal problems can be fixed. These studies – unexpurgated – should have been major inputs to the planning behind the Department of Homeland Defense. Such studies should have been completed long ago at NSA, CIA, and DIA for example. If they have not been done, the action is not to form a committee to learn what happened but to fire every senior official of each intelligence agency, beginning at the top. The only evident reason for forming a committee is to white wash or quiet the claims of gross malfeasance and appease the public by appointing a committee to investigate the incident.

Probably most disturbing was President Bush’s public remarks at CIA headquarters shortly after 9-11. He stated: “George [Tenet, director CIA] and I have spent a lot of quality time together over the past few weeks…I want you to know that I trust the CIA…Everyone should trust the CIA.” To anyone with any knowledge of the CIA, this was an unbelievable statement, especially following as it did on the heels of a number of articles written by former CIA operators and analysts castigating the CIA management, tradecraft, politically correct promotions policy, and operations. As though this were not enough, no one mentioned the years the CIA swept information on Soviet sponsorship of international terrorism under the rug and even discredited many of their own sources in an effort to kill a DIA study that identified the Soviet Union as the major sponsor of international terrorism. The real tragedy, supported in the Woodward “history,” Bush at War, is that it seems likely that the President may really believe what he said.

A final item in a threat assessment concerns the goals and objectives of the enemy. This is a difficult problem because we have such a wide variety of enemies, as indicated earlier. At times it seems that U.S. policy is principally designed to make enemies or create antagonisms. However, the difficulty lies not so much in identifying the various interests of the variety of hostile elements but in integrating them and understanding the manner in which they will influence actions and responses.

The terrorist situation today differs from past conflicts. The terrorists do not seek to destroy our military forces or to destroy the people. Their objectives are dominantly political and involve two different sets of vested interests: those of the terrorists themselves and those of the organizations or states that support or sponsor them. One targets the people only to destroy their faith in their government.

The stated objectives of Osama bin Laden are especially interesting because they indicate how clearly the enemy is thinking. They believe the way to bring down our political system is to target our economic “supremacy” – specifically, the dollar. Given the deep weaknesses in the U.S. economic system today, this should be of considerable concern. The concern is not just for terrorist attacks, but equally important what their associates in international organized crime and money laundering might consider doing. With revenues averaging over a trillion dollars a year for the past 15 to 20 years, their cumulative investments give them rather significant leverage over the international financial markets.

At a conference in Austria five years ago, an Europol intelligence official expressed his concern that it would not be long before international organized crime controlled the financial markets because of the strength and influence they had amassed. These people are not dumb. They are smart, powerful, and connected. They are well informed about the economic state of the United States and the dollar, including its weaknesses and vulnerabilities. They saw 9-11 and without question its impact on their interests and investments. It would be naïve to fail to recognize their logical interests and preparations to capitalize on the chaos should a second shoe drop. Moreover, to a degree, they are not sympathetic to the United States and many would like to see the United States cut down to size. Their main concern is their own interests, not those of the United States.

Although U.S. administrations – not just the current Bush Administration – seem to see the American economic system as a tower of strength, one has to wonder what are they comparing it against? Certainly not the United States of fifty years ago when debts of all sorts were, relative to today, almost nonexistent, when the dollar was worth ten times what it is today, when U.S. industry was strong and exports far exceeded imports, when a family could live on the income of one wage earner, when U.S. education was the best in the world, when our society was not bombarded by illegal drugs, and when the societal regression we find ourselves in today was only beginning.

It is hard to think of a serious problem America faces today that was not recognized twenty-five years ago. Not one administration in the intervening years has taken steps to address the root causes and all the problems are worse today.

State sponsors such as Russia and China and nearby terrorist states, like Cuba, should be of major concern. Their objectives have been to destroy our culture and political system. Our weaknesses (including the inability of our leaders to see what has been happening) have increased significantly over the past forty years, thanks to successes in covert intelligence operations that our enemies have realized, such as those in narcotics trafficking. Today, there are numerous terrorist states (Cuba, Russia, and China, for example) that could make the anthrax demonstration of October 2001 look like child’s play as indicated earlier. Today, the threat of nuclear attack is greater than ever before because the proliferation bogyman has guaranteed our inability to retaliate. Should a nuclear bomb explode in one of our cities, it is unlikely, as in the case of the October 2001 anthrax attack, that we would know the source of the attack, especially if it were dressed up to look like a terrorist event. How long could any administration or Congress survive the results of just one modest nuclear explosion in a major U.S. city?

Equally of concern should be the tremendous impact of the Vietnam War on U.S. economic strength, political will, and respect for authority. The damage done by this war was horrendous. It is again no accident that one of the objectives stated by high-ranking Marxist and Left officials over the past five years has been to “get the U.S. involved in more Vietnams.” As hard as it is to believe, this could be exactly the direction in which we are headed. No one would have believed it in 1962 and few will believe it today, but the indicators are present.

There is also a large portion of the Left, both at home and abroad, that would like to see the United States cut down to size politically and economically in the interests of furthering the destruction of U.S. national sovereignty and facilitating our entry into the New World Order. Remember, that in a brief moment of honesty, progress into the New World Order is what the first Gulf War was all about, as stated over and over by President Bush and Dr. Henry Kissinger. Might not this, in effect, help explain why today’s President Bush told leaders of Congress shortly after 9-11 that he did not want a Congressional Declaration of War: namely, because it would have had the effect of placing us on a return to a Constitutional Republic and taken us off the path of policeman for the New World Order? If Congress set about to declare war, might someone ask, “How can we declare war on a nation that has not attacked us and is not known to be about to attack us?”

Notwithstanding the general lack of information and massive propaganda assault that dominates the news and political commentaries, still a troubling pattern can be seen.

It is also evident that opposition to President Bush’s approach is growing both at home and abroad in parallel with mounting concern for the anti-Saddam invective and the ease with which the reason for invading Iraq seems to change. These points will be addressed next week.

If it does come to that, I hope (and predict) that our plan will be to announce, "In retaliation for act X by Iraq, we will launch an ICBM carrying a megaton nuclear warhead at Baghdad exactly 48 hours from now. We urge the residents of Baghdad to begin evacuating immediately -- minimum safe distance is Z kilometers. This schedule is not open to negotiation."

The current regime in Iraq will evacuate itself and leave the rest of the population as hostages. However, we might get really lucky and get the vbolunteer human sheilds to stay there. Of course when the next few cities are given their warning they will be far more likely to evacuate. I note that the failure of the Iraqi people to effectively remove Saddam means they will probably have to suffer most of the carnage. I did not make the rules of life I only note thatis a fact. Is it sad? Yes.

So, would this guy be happier if we waited long enough for Iraq and some of the others to build large stores of WMD and then really be at their mercy? He doesn't seem to understand that a knee-jerk flurry of terrorist attacks, while potentially tragic, is far more desireable than letting them pick and choose at their leisure...

Bingo!

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