Suicide From Fear of Death - article

[Yomar]

Suicide From Fear of Death?

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2003 issue

Richard K. Betts is Director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a member of the National Commission on Terrorism. Among his books are "Surprise Attack, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance", "Military Readiness", and "Conflict After the Cold War".

SNAKE FIGHT

With war in the Middle East imminent, it is clear that the United States has painted itself -- as well as Iraq -- into a corner. The Bush administration's success in engineering international support for a preventive war in the Persian Gulf is impressive, both politically and diplomatically. But Washington's case rests on two crucial errors. It understates the very real risk that an assault on Iraq will trigger a counterattack on American civilians. And even when that risk is admitted, the pro-war camp conflates it with the threat of unprovoked attack by Iraq in the future.

Many Americans still take for granted that a war to topple Saddam Hussein can be fought as it was in 1991: on American terms. Even when they recognize that the blood price may prove greater than the optimists hope, most still assume it will be paid by the U.S. military or by people in the region. Until very late in the game, few Americans focused on the chance that the battlefield could extend back to their own homeland. Yet if a U.S. invasion succeeds, Saddam will have no reason to withhold his best parting shot -- which could be the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) inside the United States. Such an Iraqi attack on U.S. civilians could make the death toll from September 11 look small. But Washington has done little to prepare the country for this possibility and seems to have forgotten Bismarck's characterization of preventive war as "suicide from fear of death."

America's political leaders have not just lost faith in deterrence as a means to contain Iraq, they have also lost sight of the fact that, when it comes to a showdown between two countries that both possess WMD, deterrence can work both ways. The United States is about to poke a snake out of fear that the snake might strike sometime in the future, while virtually ignoring the danger that it may strike back when America pokes it. True, not everyone demanding an American attack ignores the immediate threat such an attack might raise -- but even this camp misreads that threat, thinking it reinforces the urgency of preventive war. The consequences, they argue, will only get worse if Washington waits. This argument may seem like common sense at first. But it dangerously confuses two sets of odds: the chance that Iraq will eventually challenge America even without being provoked, and the risk that Baghdad will retaliate against Washington if struck first.

The probability that Iraq could bring off a WMD attack on American soil may not be high, but even a modest probability warrants concern. By mistakenly conflating the immediate and long-term risks of Iraqi attack and by exaggerating the dangers in alternatives to war, the advocates of a preventive war against Saddam have miscast a modest probability of catastrophe as an acceptable risk.

COUNTERSTRIKE

An invasion to get rid of Saddam would represent an American attempt to do what no government has ever done before: destroy a regime that possesses WMD. Countries with WMD have fought each other twice before, but these events (when China and the Soviet Union came to blows on the Ussuri River in 1969, and when India and Pakistan fought over Kargil in 2000) were mere skirmishes. In both of those limited clashes, neither side's leadership was truly threatened. The opposite is true this time, and yet the difference has not been digested by pro-war strategists.

During Congress' debate over whether to authorize the war, for example, the danger that a preventive assault might provoke Iraqi retaliation against the American heartland went almost unmentioned. In an October letter, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet stated that Saddam would be more likely to attempt a WMD attack against the United States as "his last chance to exact vengeance" if he believed he could no longer deter an American onslaught -- but this comment received scant notice. Attention focused instead on less immediate, less likely, and less dangerous threats. Hawks argued that Iraq will get nuclear weapons in the future. But the fact is that the biological weapons Iraq already has are dangerous enough to do tremendous damage -- even if the worst estimates of U.S. vulnerability are excessive.

A 1993 study by the Office of Technology Assessment concluded that one plane, delivering anthrax by aerosol under good weather conditions over the Washington, D.C., area, could kill between one million and three million people. That figure is probably far too pessimistic even for an efficiently executed attack, since among other things, the medical response would be quicker and more effective today than it would have been a decade ago. So discount this estimate by, say, 90 percent. Even then, fatalities could still exceed 100,000. This reduced figure may still be excessive, since clandestine Iraqi operations to infect U.S. cities might be crude and inefficient. Yet if you reduce the death toll by another 90 percent, fatalities would still be more than triple those of September 11. Multiple attacks, even clumsy ones, could yield tens of thousands of casualties. Worst of all, Iraq may have bioengineered new pathogens for which no defense is available. Chemical weapons, although less destructive than biological ones, could also exact a dramatic toll.

But is an Iraqi counterattack on U.S. soil really plausible? Hawks argue that Saddam must be eliminated because he may decide to use WMD in the future or give them to terrorists -- even if the United States threatens him with devastating retaliation. This argument assumes that Saddam would be prepared to cut his own throat without provocation. If that is true, it certainly follows that he will lash out with anything he has if Washington goes for his jugular and puts his back against the wall.

Yet Washington now seems determined to push him to that wall. Few are proposing that Saddam be retired to a villa on the Riviera next to "Baby Doc" Duvalier's. The option of a golden parachute should be considered, but it is unlikely to be accepted. Saddam would demand protection from extradition so that he could avoid joining Milosevic in court. And even Saddam knows he has too many bitter enemies to survive for long outside Iraq. Regime change in Baghdad, therefore, probably means an end to Saddam Hussein. And he will not go gently if he has nothing left to lose. If a military assault to overthrow the Iraqi regime looks likely to succeed, there is no reason to doubt Saddam will try to use biological weapons where they would hurt Americans the most.

Instead of considering the chances of a strike on the American heartland, however, war planners have tended to focus on the vulnerability of U.S. invasion forces, or on local supporters such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait -- as if they are the only likely targets of an Iraqi WMD attack. Awful as attacks on these targets would be, the consequences would be nowhere near as large from the American perspective as those of a strike on the United States itself. The only remaining question, then, is whether Saddam would have the capability to carry out such an attack.

Maybe he won't. Saddam may not be crafty enough to figure out how to strike the American homeland. Iraqi intelligence may be too incompetent to smuggle biological weapons into the United States and set them off. Or Saddam's underlings might disobey orders to do so. The terrorists to whom Iraq subcontracts the job might bungle it. Or perhaps American forces could find and neutralize all of Iraq's WMD before they could be detonated. But it would be reckless to bank on maybes. Washington has given Saddam more than enough time to concoct retaliation, since he has had months of notice that the Americans are coming. The Bush administration has made this war the most telegraphed punch in military history.

Is it alarmist to emphasize the danger of an Iraqi counterattack on American soil? The odds may be low -- perhaps as low as the odds were on September 10, 2001, that 19 Arab civilians would level the World Trade Center and tear a chunk out of the Pentagon. Even if the odds are as high as one out of six, however, that makes the risks inherent in overthrowing Saddam look like Russian roulette. It would be one thing for Americans to hope that they can wage war without triggering effective retaliation. But it would be altogether different to blithely assume that outcome; such unwarranted optimism represents the kind of "best case" planning that should shame any self-respecting hawk.

Taking the threat of retaliation seriously means two big things: preparing to cope with it, and reconsidering the need to start the war that could bring it on. If war on Iraq is deemed necessary despite the risk of mass destruction, Washington is dangerously far behind in preparing the home front. The United States must not wait until the war begins to put homeland defense into high gear. Studies and plans to prepare for future biological or chemical attack should be implemented in advance, not left on the drawing board until American tanks start rolling into Baghdad. The American people deserve immediate, loud, clear, and detailed instructions about how to know, what to do, where to go, and how to cope if they encounter anthrax, ricin, smallpox, vx, or other pathogens or chemicals Iraq might use against them. It is already too late now to do what should have been done much earlier -- to cut through the production problems and other complications in making anthrax vaccines available to civilians (much of the military has already been vaccinated). At least there should be a crash program to test and put in place mechanisms for detecting anthrax attacks promptly and dispensing antibiotics on a massive scale; these are the minimum steps the Bush administration should take before it pokes the snake. Smallpox is a less likely threat, and much planning has been done for mass vaccination in an emergency. But at a minimum, health-care workers should be immunized in advance. Until the U.S. government is ready to do all these things, it will not be ready to start a war.

HOW TO FIGHT A COLD WAR

Although it is already terribly late in the day, the risk of Iraqi retaliation also underlines the need to reconsider the alternative to provoking it. Why are containment and deterrence -- the strategies that worked for the four decades of the Cold War -- suddenly considered more dangerous than poking the snake? Proponents of war against Iraq have provided an answer -- but they are wrong.

Deterrence rests on the assumption that a rational actor will not take a step if the consequences of that action are guaranteed to be devastating to him. The United States can therefore deter Iraqi aggression unless or until Saddam deliberately chooses to bring on his own demise, when he could otherwise continue to survive, scheme, and hope for an opportunity to improve his hand. Of course, Saddam's record is so filled with rash mistakes that many now consider him undeterrable. But there is no good evidence to prove that is the case. Reckless as he has been, he has never yet done something Washington told him would be suicidal.

It is true that Saddam has a bad record of miscalculation and risk-taking. But he made his worst mistake precisely because Bush the Elder did not try to deter him. In fact, Washington effectively gave Baghdad a green light prior to its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Ambassador April Glaspie was never instructed to warn Saddam that the United States would go to war if he grabbed Kuwait. During the ensuing war, in contrast, American leaders did issue a deterrent threat, warning Saddam against using biological or chemical weapons. And that deterrent worked. (The threat in that case was only elliptical; to make future deterrence less uncertain, threats should be much more explicit.) Despite humiliating defeat, Saddam held back his high cards in 1991 because he was never forced to the wall or confronted with his own demise. That war, unlike the one now contemplated, was limited.

Bush the Younger has quite aptly compared Saddam to Stalin but has drawn the wrong lesson from that parallel. Like Saddam, Stalin miscalculated in approving the invasion of South Korea in 1950, because President Truman (like the elder Bush in 1990) had not tried to deter him in advance. In fact, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had indicated publicly that South Korea was outside the U.S. defense perimeter. On the other hand, Stalin never invaded Western Europe, where the NATO deterrent was clear. For his part, Saddam's record shows that he is foolishly self-destructive when the consequences of his gambles are unclear, but not when they are unmistakable.

Should Saddam be compared to terrorists instead of to Stalin? If the Iraqi regime is viewed as similar to al Qaeda (a conflation of threats that official rhetoric has encouraged), deterrence would indeed be impractical. But Saddam and his Baath Party supporters are not religious fanatics bent on martyrdom. They are secularist thugs focused on their fortunes in this world. Nor can they hide from the United States, as al Qaeda members can. The crucial difference between a rogue state and a terrorist group is that the state has a return address.

None of this is meant to imply that containment and deterrence are risk-free strategies. They are simply less risky than would be starting a war that could precipitate the very danger it aims to prevent. Besides, what makes hawks so sure that long-term deterrence is more dangerous than immediate provocation? Saddam could be a greater threat in five years than he is today. But he could also be dead. He is now 65, and although he has so far been adept at foiling coups and assassination attempts, his continued success is hardly guaranteed. His stocks of WMD will grow more potent over time, but why should Saddam suddenly decide in the future that they afford him options he now lacks? And at what point in the growth of his arsenal would he plausibly choose to bring down a decisive American assault on himself and all his works?

It is also worth remembering that briefs made for preventive war in the past have proved terribly wrong. Truman, for example, did not buy arguments for attacking the Soviet Union -- despite the fact that, as the historian Paul Schroeder wrote recently in The American Conservative, "Stalin had nuclear weapons, was a worse sociopath than Hussein ... and his record of atrocities against his own people was far worse than Hussein's." Moreover, within a few years of Navy Secretary Francis Matthews' and others' having recommended preventive war against him, Stalin was dead. In 1968, similarly, Robert Lawrence and William Van Cleave (who served a dozen years later as head of Reagan's Pentagon transition team) published a detailed rationale in National Review for attacks on China's nascent nuclear facilities. It is easy today to forget that at that time, Mao was considered as fanatically aggressive and crazy as Saddam is today. But within a few years of Lawrence and Van Cleave's article, Washington and Beijing had become tacit allies. How history could have turned out had either of these preventive wars actually been fought is a sobering thought, and one that the White House should now consider.

BEST IN A BAD SITUATION

Relying on deterrence indefinitely is not foolproof. Unfortunately, international politics is full of cases where the only policy choices are between risky options and even riskier ones. In the current era of U.S. primacy, Americans often forget this fact, mistakenly assuming that the only problems they cannot solve satisfactorily are those about which they are inattentive or irresolute. Overconfident in U.S. capacity to eliminate Saddam without disastrous side effects, leaders in Washington have also become curiously pessimistic about deterrence and containment, which sustained U.S. strategy through 40 years of Cold War against a far more formidable adversary. Why has Washington lost its faith?

One explanation is psychological and moral. Many people think of deterrence as something the good guys do to the bad, not the reverse. To use the current danger of Iraqi retaliation as a reason not to attack seems dishonorable, like taking counsel from fear, a wimpy submission to blackmail. Moreover, it strikes Americans as presumptuous for a country such as Iraq to aspire to paralyze U.S. power. And it is a matter of American honor not to be deterred from suppressing evil. The cold logic of deterrence, however, has nothing to do with which side is good or evil. Deterrence depends only on the hard facts of capability, which should constrain the good as well as the bad.

Some Americans also become indignant when it is suggested that an Iraqi counterattack could be considered the fault of American initiative. This stance, they argue, is like blaming the victim. But this argument again confuses moral and material interests. If the snake strikes back when you poke it, you may blame the snake rather than yourself for being bitten. But you will still wish that you had not poked it.

Of course, Iraq has undermined its own deterrent potential by not making it explicit. Because he always denies that he possesses prohibited WMD, Saddam cannot declare a deterrent capability or doctrine. Iraq's bugs in the basement should work like Israel's bomb in the basement -- as an undeclared deterrent, known about by those who need to know. But Iraq's WMD have not worked like Israel's, because, despite their potentially comparable killing power, biological weapons just do not instill the same fear as their nuclear equivalents.

At this late date, it would be awkward for Washington to step back from war -- an embarrassing retreat, unless it was cushioned by apparent success in imposing inspections. (Administration leaders are correct in believing that genuinely successful inspections are nearly impossible. To work, they would have to prove a negative -- that Saddam has not stashed WMD somewhere in his vast country that inspectors have not been clued in to search.) The only thing worse than such embarrassment, however, would be to go ahead with a mistaken strategy that risks retaliation against American civilians, extraordinarily bloody urban combat, and damage to the war on terrorism. No good alternatives to war exist at this point, but there are several that are less bad.

The first such option is to squeeze the box in which Saddam is currently being contained. This means selectively tightening sanctions -- not those that allegedly harm civilians, but the prohibitions on imports of materials for military use and the illicit export of oil. More monitors could be deployed, and the inspection of cargoes could be increased. The squeeze would continue at least until absolutely unimpeded disarmament inspections -- anytime, anywhere, undelayed, and institutionalized until the regime changes -- had been under way for a long period. There would be no international enthusiasm for more serious sanctions, but reluctant allies would embrace such a course if it were offered as the alternative to war. The crumbling of sanctions was one of the motives for the Bush administration's move toward war; stepping back from the war will reinvigorate containment and disabuse Saddam of the hope that he can wriggle away from it.

Second, Washington should continue to foment internal overthrow of Iraq's regime. Saddam seems immune to covert action, but even long-shot possibilities sometimes pan out.

Third, the Bush administration could consider quasi war. U.S. forces might occupy the Kurdish area of northern Iraq (where Saddam has not exercised control for years) and build up the wherewithal to move quickly against him at some unspecified future date -- to enforce inspections, to protect Iraqi garrisons that revolt against his rule, or, ultimately, to invade Baghdad.

As the noose tightens, Washington or its allies should offer Saddam safe haven if he and his henchmen step down. Of course, he is not likely to accept, and if he does, it would lead to an international chorus of clucking tongues as a heinous criminal escaped justice. But it would not hurt to leave open a bad alternative that remains better than unlimited war.

In pondering Bismarck's line about preventive war, it helps to recall the consequences of the Prussian's passing. He was soon replaced by leaders who saw more logic and necessity in the course Bismarck had derided. In 1914, such European leaders thought they had no alternative but to confront current threats with decisive preventive war, and they believed the war would be a short one. As often happens in war, however, their expectations were rudely confounded, and instead of resolving the threat, they produced four years of catastrophic carnage.

Applying Bismarck's definition of preventive war to the current case is a bit hyperbolic. Iraqi retaliation would not destroy the United States -- it might not even occur. But running even a modest risk of tens of thousands of American civilian casualties is unacceptable when compared to the exaggerated risk that Iraq will court its own suicide by using or helping others use WMD without provocation, and will do so before Saddam's regime is overthrown from within.

If war is to be, the United States must win it as quickly and decisively as possible. If no catastrophic Iraqi counterattack occurs, these warnings will be seen as needless alarmism. But before deciding on waging a war, President Bush should consider that if that war results in consequences even a fraction of those of 1914, those results will thoroughly discredit his decision to start it.

[redman]

Originally posted by Yomar

The probability that Iraq could bring off a WMD attack on American soil may not be high, but even a modest probability warrants concern. By mistakenly conflating the immediate and long-term risks of Iraqi attack and by exaggerating the dangers in alternatives to war, the advocates of a preventive war against Saddam have miscast a modest probability of catastrophe as an acceptable risk.

I love this paragraph. He gets through the first part of his diatribe by making an assumption that legitimizes war against Iraq: that they can deliver WMD's to our shores.

He then realizes his error undercuts his hypothesis and tries to mitigate that problem and have it both ways by saying, apparently, that our attack is a bad idea as it will lead to Iraq's use of WMD's, which they have very little chance of delivering to our shores, which of course makes attacking Iraq a bad idea! You follow? :shootinth

[redman]

Originally posted by Yomar

COUNTERSTRIKE

An invasion to get rid of Saddam would represent an American attempt to do what no government has ever done before: destroy a regime that possesses WMD. Countries with WMD have fought each other twice before, but these events (when China and the Soviet Union came to blows on the Ussuri River in 1969, and when India and Pakistan fought over Kargil in 2000) were mere skirmishes. In both of those limited clashes, neither side's leadership was truly threatened. The opposite is true this time, and yet the difference has not been digested by pro-war strategists.

Funny, I thought the Kaiser's Germany in WWI was in possession of chemical weapons . . . I also believe that Hitler's Germany had them too, but (for some baffling reason given what else they did) refused to use them. Don't they count?

[redman]

Originally posted by Yomar

Should Saddam be compared to terrorists instead of to Stalin? If the Iraqi regime is viewed as similar to al Qaeda (a conflation of threats that official rhetoric has encouraged), deterrence would indeed be impractical. But Saddam and his Baath Party supporters are not religious fanatics bent on martyrdom. They are secularist thugs focused on their fortunes in this world. Nor can they hide from the United States, as al Qaeda members can. The crucial difference between a rogue state and a terrorist group is that the state has a return address.

The author ignores that, while a secular leader, Saddam has quite an affinity for the idea of martyrdom within the Arab context: he fancies himself as the modern-day Saladin, defender of the Arab lands against the infidels and the uniter of all Arabs. His highly romanticized concept of this, much of which arises out of a similar set of larger Arab cultural views, envisions his own death against the U.S. as the ultimate act of heroism on behalf of all Arabs.

So while he's not angling to be a religious martyr the way bin Laden is (although I'm sure he also has conceptions of this too), he would be a secular Arab martyr and no less irrational therefore to predict. Containment is not an option.

[Yomar]

Originally posted by redman

I love this paragraph. He gets through the first part of his diatribe by making an assumption that legitimizes war against Iraq: that they can deliver WMD's to our shores.

He then realizes his error undercuts his hypothesis and tries to mitigate that problem and have it both ways by saying, apparently, that our attack is a bad idea as it will lead to Iraq's use of WMD's, which they have very little chance of delivering to our shores, which of course makes attacking Iraq a bad idea! You follow? :shootinth

I'm not quite sure I follow you. His argument here is that there are two issues that should be weighed when contemplating how to approach the situation with Iraq that are being confused:

A) The chance that Iraq will eventually challenge America even without being provoked

The risk that Baghdad will retaliate against Washington if struck first.

He is saying that the chance that Iraq may already be capable of delivering a WMD attack on U.S. soil is a reason to seriously consider deterance. Particularly if homeland security is the primary concern that is driving us to war. If Iraq has the capability to deliver WMD to our soil, then the threat of Saddam doing so as a last and desparate act is a possibilty which has as he says, "been miscast as an acceptable risk".

[Yomar]

Originally posted by redman

The author ignores that, while a secular leader, Saddam has quite an affinity for the idea of martyrdom within the Arab context: he fancies himself as the modern-day Saladin, defender of the Arab lands against the infidels and the uniter of all Arabs. His highly romanticized concept of this, much of which arises out of a similar set of larger Arab cultural views, envisions his own death against the U.S. as the ultimate act of heroism on behalf of all Arabs.

So while he's not angling to be a religious martyr the way bin Laden is (although I'm sure he also has conceptions of this too), he would be a secular Arab martyr and no less irrational therefore to predict. Containment is not an option.

I have not seen any evidence of a death wish or wish for martyrdom on Saddam's part, he strikes me as a purely materialistic despot, and there is nothing a materialist values more than his own life. Any reference to Saladin by Saddam would be a self-serving excuse to grab more power ion the middle east. The author's belief that deterrance is a viable option and that we are not dealing with a religious fanatic bent on martyrdom is in the preceeding paragraph. Essentially, the author believes that Saddam is concerned only with his own power and based on his prior actions believes that Saddam would not sacrifice himself with the use of WMD against the U.S. except as a last resort when faced with a direct threat to his power.

"It is true that Saddam has a bad record of miscalculation and risk-taking. But he made his worst mistake precisely because Bush the Elder did not try to deter him. In fact, Washington effectively gave Baghdad a green light prior to its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Ambassador April Glaspie was never instructed to warn Saddam that the United States would go to war if he grabbed Kuwait. During the ensuing war, in contrast, American leaders did issue a deterrent threat, warning Saddam against using biological or chemical weapons. And that deterrent worked. (The threat in that case was only elliptical; to make future deterrence less uncertain, threats should be much more explicit.) Despite humiliating defeat, Saddam held back his high cards in 1991 because he was never forced to the wall or confronted with his own demise. That war, unlike the one now contemplated, was limited. "

[Yomar]

Originally posted by redman

Funny, I thought the Kaiser's Germany in WWI was in possession of chemical weapons . . . I also believe that Hitler's Germany had them too, but (for some baffling reason given what else they did) refused to use them. Don't they count?

I'm not sure how effective the WMD of the first half century were, but technically you are right. The author seems to ignore those instances and focus only on world history after the dawn of nuclear weapons and specifically on instances when both parties had nukes, but Iraq doesn't have nukes (we hope) so it isn't the greatest example.

[inmate running the asylum]

Originally posted by Yomar

I'm not sure how effective the WMD of the first half century were.

The mustard and phosgene gas that Germany used in WWI was initially effective because of surprise -- killing and blinding thousands -- but it also had its drawbacks. It was usually delivered by artillery shell and because the trench lines were close together, shifting winds frequently blew it back on the user.

Soon after being attacked with gas, England and France retaliated on Germany with their gas and then a "gentlemen's agreement" soon developed, whereby one side did not use it on a front unless the other side did. All sides were also ill prepared for this type of warfare -- poor gas masks, medical treatment, etc., which also quickly led to its disuse, when there was no advantage to either side. This is also why it was not used in WWII.

[Riggo-toni]

Originally posted by redman

I also believe that Hitler's Germany had them too, but (for some baffling reason given what else they did) refused to use them.

Hitler refused to use them because he'd been temporarily blinded as a corporal in WWI. He was afraid if he used them that the allies would respond in kind.

Twisted Factoid - The Officer who nominated Hitler for his decoration in WWI was Jewish.

[redman]

Originally posted by Yomar

I have not seen any evidence of a death wish or wish for martyrdom on Saddam's part, he strikes me as a purely materialistic despot, and there is nothing a materialist values more than his own life. Any reference to Saladin by Saddam would be a self-serving excuse to grab more power ion the middle east.

This isn't something that I've made up. This comes from profiles of Saddam based upon interviews with defectors who worked closely with him and is the formal intelligence view of him. He does indeed fancy himself as modern history's Great Arab Leader and he believes that a glorious death fighting against the U.S. infidel superpower and their Zionist allies will cement his name in history. A lot of this is simply cultural for the Arabs. I'll try to find a link for you.

The whole reason why he invaded Kuwait, for example, was that after a decade of war against the non-Arab Iranian Persians, he felt that he was owed something by the Arab world for the debts he incurred from them to fight the war. The Kuwaitis were big-time creditors of Iraq during the 1980's, and their refusal to respect his service on behalf of all Arabs by forgiving those loans led him to instigate the invasion of Kuwait.

The point is that simply thinking that Saddam's not an unpredictable fanatic because he's not a religious figure is ignoring some significant aspects of this situation.

[redman]

Originally posted by Yomar

I'm not quite sure I follow you. His argument here is that there are two issues that should be weighed when contemplating how to approach the situation with Iraq that are being confused:

A) The chance that Iraq will eventually challenge America even without being provoked

The risk that Baghdad will retaliate against Washington if struck first.

He is saying that the chance that Iraq may already be capable of delivering a WMD attack on U.S. soil is a reason to seriously consider deterance. Particularly if homeland security is the primary concern that is driving us to war. If Iraq has the capability to deliver WMD to our soil, then the threat of Saddam doing so as a last and desparate act is a possibilty which has as he says, "been miscast as an acceptable risk".

The confusion inherent in his argument is thus:

He is arguing both that the threat by Iraq against us is not great enough to justify invasion, and that we can't adequately defend against an Iraqi counter attack using WMD's. WTF?

If they can get to us now using WMD's, then there's no real argument to be had about striking them now, right?

[Mad Mike]

The author ignores the most serious threat of all; that Sadam will hand those weapons to Al Qaeda as a means of delivering them to the US with plausible deniability. To ignore this leaves a massive whole in his logic that derails his entire argument.

[Yomar]

I don't think the author presents the argument we should not attack Iraq because they do not pose a significant threat to us in terms of their possessing the capability to use WMD against us. I think his argument is based on the supposition that they in fact do have some WMD capability, so I don't see the contradiction.

[Mad Mike]

Originally posted by Yomar

I don't think the author presents the argument we should not attack Iraq because they do not pose a significant threat to us in terms of their possessing the capability to use WMD against us. I think his argument is based on the supposition that they in fact do have some WMD capability, so I don't see the contradiction.

Then the author is arguing that 1441 should be ignored, leaving the UN exposed as the sham that it has become and inviting every two bit dictator and terorist to do whatever they want because we will tuck our tails between our legs and run.

No. No problem here. :doh:

[Yomar]

Originally posted by Mad Mike

The author ignores the most serious threat of all; that Sadam will hand those weapons to Al Qaeda as a means of delivering them to the US with plausible deniability. To ignore this leaves a massive whole in his logic that derails his entire argument.

Thats not quite right. N. Korea is as likely to supply Al Qaeda as Iraq is, and I only use N. Korea as an example because they are at the forefront of our consciousness, there are limitless potential resources for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda should be the first and foremost issue on the minds of everyone charged with protecting this country, and no stone should be left unturned, but citing Al Qaeda as a reason does not hold much water when making a case for war against Iraq. The Iraq/Al Qaeda link is tenuous at best. Here is a quote from the latest Bin Laden tape illustrating his admiration for the regime in Iraq:

"First, the sincerity of intentions for the fighting should be for the sake of Allah only, no other, and not for the victory of national minorities or for the aid of the infidel regimes in all Arab countries, including Iraq."

Also, here is an article from the Post from yesterday re: Al Qaeda and Iraq.

washingtonpost.com

Bin Laden-Hussein Link Hazy

U.S. Officials Qualify Statements on Possible Terrorist Ties

By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, February 13, 2003; Page A20

In the past two days, administration officials have appeared to qualify their case that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have paired up to threaten the United States, a key argument for going to war against Iraq.

CIA Director George J. Tenet twice told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that Abu Musab Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate who last year sought medical care in Baghdad and then disappeared, is in the Iraqi capital. But after the hearing, intelligence officials said they did not know where Zarqawi was because he moves around a lot.

On Tuesday, Tenet said at another hearing that Zarqawi was not "under the control" of Hussein. Yesterday, he added that "it's inconceivable" that Zarqawi and two dozen Egyptian Islamic Jihad associates "are sitting there without the Iraqi intelligence service's knowledge of the fact that there is a safe haven being provided." The CIA director said Zarqawi took money from bin Laden, but he later said Zarqawi and his network were "independent."

Under questioning by Democratic senators about the strength of the link between al Qaeda and Iraq, Tenet said Zarqawi was "on my list of top 30 individuals" the CIA is targeting, a reference to a presidential directive the CIA has been given to kill these individuals.

On the matter of a new tape of bin Laden broadcast by the al-Jazeera network -- and considered authentic by U.S. officials -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Tuesday the tape showed the al Qaeda leader "is in partnership with Iraq." But intelligence analysts inside and outside the government said that bin Laden went out of his way in the recording to show his contempt for Hussein and his Baath Party regime, whom he referred to as "infidels" and one of several "infidel regimes" that should be aided not for themselves but for the "sake of Allah."

Tenet said yesterday that the tape "is unprecedented in terms of the way he expresses solidarity with Baghdad." But he added, "whether he is aligning himself with the Iraqi government, as it appears, or he is speaking to the Iraqi people . . . I need a little more time to do a little bit more work on that."

On the tape, bin Laden discussed the U.S. preparations for a possible coalition attack on Iraq and encouraged Iraqis to take up arms against what he called "crusaders" who were going to occupy Baghdad "to rob the wealth of Muslims and to appoint over you an agent government that follows Washington and Tel Aviv . . . in preparation for the founding of the greater Israel."

The "crusaders," bin Laden said, are targeting "Islam, irrespective of whether the Baath Party and Saddam were deposed or not."

Last week, Powell used sensitive intercepts to show the U.N. Security Council that Iraq was hiding chemical and biological weapons. But in two cases, senior administration officials said yesterday, they did not know what military items were discussed in the intercepts.

One tape of an intercepted message had two senior officers of Hussein's elite Republic Guard discussing a "modified vehicle" with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei coming for an inspection. One officer asks what to do if ElBaradei sees it, and the other worries that it had not been evacuated from the facility along with everything else.

A senior administration official familiar with the intelligence said CIA analysts do not know what vehicle is being discussed. But because it came from a factory where weapons were built, he said, "it would be gullible to think something else" other than a proscribed weapon was involved. The official said the conclusion was it is illegal, "otherwise they would have explained it."

In another taped radio transmission, two Republican Guard officers talk about destroying a message that mentions "the possibility there are forbidden ammo" at a site where the message was sent. The original message was to "clean out all the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there." The radio order was to destroy that previous message.

Powell, in presenting this intercept, said the only reason to destroy the message was so "they can claim that nothing was there," not even the original message.

A senior official said yesterday that U.S. intelligence does not know whether there was "forbidden ammo" at the site where the radio message was received. The tape recording was included in Powell's presentation to show that there was concern such ammo could turn up.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Mad Mike]

You missed the most telling Bin Lade quote...

And it doesn't harm in these conditions the interest of Muslims to agree with those of the socialists in fighting against the crusaders

To this I add the same set of questions that I have posed to TheKurp.

We have two choices.

1) We can assume there is a link, go in and take out a ruthless dictator who has spent his life aquiring WMD, and has gone so far as to attempt the assasination of a US president in his hatred for us, knowing that if he does have the link he WILL eventualy hand over weapons to Al Qaeda who will then use them to attack us.

or

2) We assume there is no link and that we are safe.

In the first case the worst thing that can happen is we take some casualties and remove a ruthless dictator who is crazy enough to try to assasinate an american president regardless of the consiquences should he be succesfull.

In the second, the worst thing that can happen is Sadam develops a nuke, hands it to Al Qaeda and they use it to whipe out DC and/or New York.

Now, which is the right course of action for the security of the United States?

And before you go on about Korea, let me point out that it would be foolish to argue that because other posible sources of WMD exist we should not take out the most likely source in the midle east. And if we had been more firm with North Korea in the first place BEFORE they developed their nukes we would not be faced with that crisis now.

[RiggoDrill]

MM -

I don't agree that it's an either/or situation.

The author points out quite clearly that Saddam, while murderous and vile, nonetheless has consistently played his cards to ensure his own survival. That's why he didn't use the WMD's against Israel or us in the Gulf War. For his own sake , he knew better.

If he were to attack us with WMDs, through Al Queda or otherwise, he would be ensuring his own destruction, and he has never behaved that rashly towards his own grip on power.

There would be next to nothing untraceable about an Iraq-originated chemical or biological attack. Heck, our medical companies gave them the original strains in the 80's (EG posted the article). Thus, it would be easy to fingerprint the WMD's and Saddam would be no more.

However, if Saddam knows he's a goner no matter what, what does he have to lose?

He's a capricious monster to a large extent, but he's also shrewd and desperate to stay in control.

[Mad Mike]

Originally posted by RiggoDrill

MM -

I don't agree that it's an either/or situation.

The author points out quite clearly that Saddam, while murderous and vile, nonetheless has consistently played his cards to ensure his own survival. That's why he didn't use the WMD's against Israel or us in the Gulf War. For his own sake , he knew better.

If he were to attack us with WMDs, through Al Queda or otherwise, he would be ensuring his own destruction, and he has never behaved that rashly towards his own grip on power.

There would be next to nothing untraceable about an Iraq-originated chemical or biological attack. Heck, our medical companies gave them the original strains in the 80's (EG posted the article). Thus, it would be easy to fingerprint the WMD's and Saddam would be no more.

However, if Saddam knows he's a goner no matter what, what does he have to lose?

He's a capricious monster to a large extent, but he's also shrewd and desperate to stay in control.

1) The guy tried to assasinate an american president. You don't think he knew what the result would be if he succeded?

2) The antrax attack afer 9/11 was from the same strain as Iraq had. So who sent that anthrax through the mail?

Next?....

[codeorama]

Originally posted by RiggoDrill

MM -

I don't agree that it's an either/or situation.

The author points out quite clearly that Saddam, while murderous and vile, nonetheless has consistently played his cards to ensure his own survival. That's why he didn't use the WMD's against Israel or us in the Gulf War. For his own sake , he knew better.

If he were to attack us with WMDs, through Al Queda or otherwise, he would be ensuring his own destruction, and he has never behaved that rashly towards his own grip on power.

There would be next to nothing untraceable about an Iraq-originated chemical or biological attack. Heck, our medical companies gave them the original strains in the 80's (EG posted the article). Thus, it would be easy to fingerprint the WMD's and Saddam would be no more.

However, if Saddam knows he's a goner no matter what, what does he have to lose?

He's a capricious monster to a large extent, but he's also shrewd and desperate to stay in control.

I agree with you.

I don't see Saddam using WMD unless he's backed into a corner.

I guess that's why I don't really understand why Bush, or Cheney I should say, wants to back him in a corner so bad.