Doug, my answer to the two questions you pose:—

1. Yes, I do believe he has weapons of mass destruction. But nowhere near the arsenal that some people would like everybody to think. I'm pretty sure he has squirreled away both biological and chemical agents, at least in small amounts, perhaps more. I do not believe he has nuclear weapons, although I think he would like to have them, and is probably rooting around for ways to make them or get them. Saddam Hussein is a tin-pot dictator with delusions of grandeur. But—he's not stupid.

2. Since he's not stupid, he is certainly aware that any overt attack on his part would undoubtedly result in a massive retaliation, with the full support and quite probably the participation of many nations. The first country to use a nuclear weapon lets the genie out of the bottle. The United States alone has a nuclear arsenal sufficient to reduce Iraq to a plain of glowing, fused green glass, should we ever be of a mind to do so. I'm quite sure Saddam is fully aware of that fact. Same with an overt chemical/biological attack. Could he support and supply terrorists? Certainly. In fact, quite probably. But that's a whole different problem. Saddam is not the only one. If determined terrorists couldn't get support—and possibly WMDs—from Saddam, there are a number of other places where they could. And when and if a terrorist attack comes, how can we be sure where it actually came from? Osama bin Laden and his ilk are what are called "men without a country." Who do we retaliate against? Germany? Canada? Florida? They have all "harbored" terrorists.

The problem with singling Iraq out as "the enemy" and dealing with it militarily is that it is an attempt to use a simple-minded solution to solve a complex problem. If the U. S. were to unilaterally wipe out Iraq or move in and replace Saddam with a puppet government of our own, we would probably engender the enmity of much of the world. But the terrorists would still be out there!.

It's roughly the equivalent of facing a problem you can't deal with easily or directly and, because of your frustration, coming home and kicking the cat. Now, it may be a very nasty cat, but that doesn't do much to solve the real problem.

Don Firth