WIsh you guys would sign your posts!

Consider the balance of power in conventional forces in the Mesopotamian area. Iraq has enough firepower with the use of NBC to steamroller the Saudis, the Syrians, the Kurds and and the Kuwaitis. The Iranians would fight him to a draw or lose. But they are not interested in doing so. So from the point of view of regional defense he has no need for NBC weapons. Yet he has apparently continued building his stockpiles of chemical weapons, although I cannot be 100% sure this is true. And there is evidence he is striving for nuclear capability -- I cannot imagine who else would have arranged for 5 ounces (140 grams) of weapons-grade uranium to be speeding across the desert toward the Iraqi border in a taxicab. $5 million dollars' worth , if I recall correctly. You think they were gonna make Timex dials with it? What use does he have for bio weapons? The only use he has put his Bio/Chem capability to was monstrous, unconscionable and genocidal. I can understand the impulse to roll out the Bradleys and smash the bugger but5 I believe it is an immature impulse.

I think it would be far _more_ interesting if we exercised enough PR control to get all his neighbors from Kurdistan around to Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey to agree on a reestablishment of the United States of Ottoman -- or at least a community of nations with the local strong agreement that Saddam was puredee bad news and ought to be bumped or weaseled out of his slot.

Bush may well find it handy to direct our attention to the "Big Evil over there" so we don't notice him buying judges. But the issue is not entirely fabricated, as a lot of very dead Kurds can attest -- not to mention those who have been shot, hanged or sliced for appearing in a bad light to the Iraqian PResident or his Ba'ath henchmen.

A