Saddam's Bag of Tricks

[adios]

Look's like the containment strategy may be exactly what Saddam wants:

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/2...0/4852137s.htm

[IrishHand]

As opposed to wanting to be killed?

[adios]

He could refrain from impeding inspections. He also could try complying with the UN resolutions he's violated and violating. Hey he might even try turning over Iraq's WMD's and all the components that he has to make them.

[IrishHand]

He could refrain from impeding inspections.
Impeding them how? Far as I can tell, he's let them go wherever they want. More importantly, if he has hordes of WMD, why on God's earth would he want anyone to find them? If he doesn't, he's put in the impossible position of proving a negative. (If you owned California, and someone accused you of having hidden stores of weapons, how would you prove you didn't have them other than letting them look wherever they wanted?)

He also could try complying with the UN resolutions he's violated and violating.
Why? (a) Those same UN resolutions are bent on crippling his country. (b) The UN is a bit of a joke anyway - he's been successfully ignoring them for a dozen years. (c) The US using the UN is even more of a joke - the US sabotages more UN proposals than any other country (generally ones that are good for humanity, but bad for US economic domination, although the US is equally eager to torpedo initiatives which might curtail it's modern imperialism).

Hey he might even try turning over Iraq's WMD's and all the components that he has to make them.
If our goal was really to get all his WMD's, we could have simply offered to trade conventional weapons for them. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Jimbo]

IrishHand,

You response outlines perfectly why we should simply bomb the living crap out of his country till he crys "uncle". Anything less is useless since he cannot prove what we wish him to prove. Now we bomb until we assume he is dead, if he turns up again we just bomb some more. It may not be efficient but will ultimately prove quite effective.

[MMMMMM]

"Impeding them how?"

Uhh, guess you must have missed that part, Irish...

"If he doesn't, he's put in the impossible position of proving a negative."

He isn't even trying to prove that he doesn't have WMD...he could at least offer some supported accounting of what he did with the WMD the world knows he had

Irish...maybe you should consider joining Ramsey Clark's defense team...I hear he's serving as legal counsel for Iraq now (yes I really did read that, and that he's working in legal capacity for Slobodan Milosevic's defense now too. It's also interesting that this same man is one of the leaders of the anti-war movement, and further that he has set up a website to try to impeach Bush).

[adios]

Here's an impediment

Iraq Approves U-2 Surveillance Flights

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...mi_ea/iraq_527

Hussein's little bone to keep stringing the inspectors along.

As far proving a negative. I find Colin Powell and other representatives of the USA a much more credible source than Iraqi officials regarding the existence of WMD's and the components to make them in Iraq.

[IrishHand]

How exactly is them letting spy planes overfly their country an impediment??

[AceHigh]

He's got to prefer containment to war, doesn't he? He can't think he will survive (continue to lead Iraq) a war does he?

I'm surprised he didn't turn over his weapons and hope America loses interest or Bush loses the election. Then, in a few years go back to developing weapons.

[MMMMMM]

There's no end to the tricks he can continue to pull out of his bag as long as he remains in power--the example you proposed is but one scenario out of many he might employ.

Since Saddam has demonstrated an inability to do anything other than deceive, evade, stall, confuse, and lie for 12 years, the only solution is obviously regime change since it would be impossible to babysit Saddam and the entire Iraqi military to the extent that would be necessary to ensure that they do not continue their covert WMD programs.