Much as I'd like to disagree with TGS, I think his explanation is more plausible.
Yes, I think that they would ask about this as a way to get information. Either they are given the information, which helps them, or they are denied it, in which case they play the innocents.
Tariq Aziz has made some really ridiculous comments over the last few months. Why would they suddenly become sophisticated? Remember "Baby Milk Factory?"
I'm going to drag some of your comments from the other thread over here if you don't mind.
"...Here, I think you miscalculate the nature of the threat from Iraq, and that explains our different attitudes toward the conflict. To be sure, Saddam Hussein is no Josef Stalin, and his miserable little desert bunker-state can't compare to the old world-bestriding Evil Empire. However, he does pose a threat. That threat is both tactical and strategic, and it centers around WMD....
Regardless of our differing calculations about Sadaam--my question is: Why Sadaam in particular? What precisely is it about Sadaam---who has been pinned down by the Anglo/Saxon airforce for 12 years--that makes him a greater threat than the North Korean dictator? Than the government of Pakistan? Or India? How about the big moo shu porker--China?
There is a great deal to be learned by the People of the world from the difference between the treatment Sadaam is receiving and that meeted out to North Korea. The rest of the world watches and remembers and calculates.
Most Americans do not even think about our destruction of Yugoslavia and our war against the Serbs anymore--except perhaps to repeat the nauseating cliche: "We fought for moslems and saved them from the Serbs so why don't they love us more?"
But what might the Leader of a small country who could, one day, find himself in the way of Uncle Sam's global plans--either intentionally or accidentally-- have learned? I'm sure you are aware, for example, that Sadaam Hussein refused to sign the GATT treaty--the forerunner to the WTO treaty. Kuwait, by the way, did not refuse to sign. But, I digress. Back to the learning process:
He would have learned that if he DOESN'T have WMDs, then he is dog dirt on Uncle Sam's shoe in any confrontation. If he hasn't learned that then he is a very, very stupid tin pot. It's what I would have learned. Isn't it what you would have learned?
Assume for a moment that Hussein has WMD, anthrax for instance. We are instantly checked--our power, our freedom of movement, our ability to take decisive action, our capacity to guarantee the stability of the global system--are all brought low.
Aside from my strong disagreement that this is so---tell me why anthrax in the hands of Sadaam Hussein in particualar so exorcises you? Why not the anthrax that is undoubtedly in the hands of the Chinese? The Koreans? Why are we so very diplomatic with those who have bragged about their WMDs and their willingness to use them? Forgive me, but I smell a school-yard bully.
A few vials of the stuff released into subways in 5 American cities could yield literally millions of casualties.
But only Sadaam's anthrax would do this? All the other anthrax in the world is harmless?
Hussein has a history of miscalculating.
An interesting comment given the number of world leaders he has outlasted in power. Given that the largest antiwar demonstrations in the history of Europe have just been carried out demanding that the US not attack him. Given that he lobbed scuds onto Israel and is still alive. Not bad for a miscalculator.
He has a Nebuchadnezzar complex a mile wide.
One of the great weaknessses of the modern West is the acceptance of psychoanalysis as a legimate means of understanding human beings. I sometimes do it myself for fun. But I never seriously calculate my actions towards another person based upon the modern myth of psychology. It would be dangerous in the extreme for a Nation to base its foreign policy on such a thing.
He sits atop a wobbly regime and must fend off the ambitions of dozens of rival tribal groups.
Sounds like the Democratic Party.
His theater of action is the largest oil producing region in the world and the home of 300MM restive Arab Muslims. This situation is unacceptable because it is neither stable nor manageable...
If we disengage from the chaos and choose not to try to manage anything what do you think would happen? How much time and treasure are you willing to expend to manage the unmanageable? When you look at our inner cities, at our government schools, our largest-in-human-history prison population, our massive debt-dependant consumer culture and our popular culture do you believe that we are the best exemplars of good managerial practice?
... not in the way the conflict with the old USSR was....
How true. We can no longer count upon fighting it out through proxies in the Third Word. The bad guys are bringing the fight to the Homeland now.
Now, if Hussein already has WMD, as The Great Satan rather convincingly argues, then this discussion (along with the one at the UN today) is moot. We are checked
Again, I ask why if Hussein has WMDs? Why not if the Koreans, the Chinese, the Pakistanis--or even the French? How about the Saudis? They have a lot of money. Is it conceivable that they have some anthrax stashed away in one of their mosques somewhere? Maybe in Beverly Hills?
...If, however, he does not have WMD in sufficient quantities to do us grave harm, then he must be stopped before he develops them....
Again, why must Sadaam be nipped in the bud, but nobody else? What is this strange obsession with Sadaam?
...But the threat is greater than even Hussein and Iraq. There are literally dozens of other petty dictators around the world who are watching this drama to determine their own next steps....
As I said, they have already learned the lessons of post Cold War history and have taken steps; logical, rational steps from their point of view. They were watching the behavior of the US Government in the wake of the end of the Cold War very closely--even if the American Public wasn't watching. We have to keep an eye on Michael Jackson's nose, after all. Instead of "giving peace a chance"--what ever happened to that "peace dividend" anyway?--we expanded NATO to the border of the Russian Federation and turned that formerly defensive alliance into an offensive weapon to settle a civil war in a small, poor country with no WMDs to threaten us and stay our hand.
If the lesson learned is that WMD guarantees one's survival and effectively checks American power, then we are in for a global arms race...
Yes, that is the lesson that even the most obtuse dolt could learn. It was the lesson that the United States taught them. I am always amused when people claim that our government schools are "failing to educate the children". Nonsense! The children are learning exactly what the government is teaching them! And so have all the those you refer to--in solipsistic, propagandistic fashion--as "petty dictators. They certainly don't view their concerns as petty.
Your assertion that we are in for a global arms race at sometime in the future if we don't stop Sadaam Hussein, is too hilarious to be taken seriously. What do you think has been going on for the last 50 years all over the planet?
There IS a way to end the threat of WMDs forever. But the only government on earth who could do that--OUR government--will never take the logical steps to make it happen....
Strange as it is to say (and think), I'm beginning to look back on that time with some nostalgia.
I'm looking even further back with nostalgia. But I think nostalgia for a country that does not view itself as a lone global superpower, or even as one of two global superpowers, has no place here on FreeRepublic anymore.....