Wheras that nice guy Kim Jong who undeniably has weapons of mass destruction including nukes as well as the world's fourth largest army, is harmless.

Bush is focussed on Saddam because he's be even easier to beat now than he was a decade ago. North Korea would be a much tougher nut, is right next door to China and oh yeah, has no oil.

Right. And when Bush tries to deal with them in the future, he'll get the same runaround from a namby-pamby U.N.; "We must reason! We must inspect! It doesn't matter that they've broken treaties! No consequences!" Until someone's dodging their weaponry.

While controlling oil is a great and possible target, I don't really think that's going to be involved in a post-war setup.

But you are right in that some of the politicos do not like sending American troops where there is no clear benefit. Opposition to the Haiti incursion and the Yugoslav incursion (call them what you will) will be instructive for some time to come. Haiti didn't have resources or diddly in the way of real value to the US. Maybe the US went in to secure Haiti so we could start having the baseballs manufactured there again!! (Political climate forced the change of baseball manufacturing to move to Costa Rica) Guess the dream of having Haitian baseballs again went up in smoke, eh?

Hola You Luva's



North Korea
???? Righhhttttt it has nothing to do with setting
off a chain reaction and turning all of the eastern world Communist ?

Iraq
Righttttttt it has nothing to do with 9-11 or trying to stamp out terrorism it's all about the oil. Righttttttt As I said in threads before if oil is a spoil of War so be it how tough would one be if they couldn't get oil for their homes
& cars ect ect etc because a despot was sitting on the worlds largest supply ?

And if Russia or China was looking to invade us
because we hid terrorists and had weapons of mass destruction and don't believe in our way of life one could have the argument that they were only after our oil reserves & Midwest bread basket....

Yup lets go to war for Exxon not for 9-11 or
getting rid of a despot or slapping terrorists upside the head.

Well gee, I guess you're right with all that evidence of links between Saddam and Al Queda - oh wait, THERE ISN'T ANY! Remember Al Queda? The guys who actually attacked the U.S.? Whose leader is still out there somewhere? A fanatical religion based group who hate Saddam's secular Iraq more than Bush does? Could Iraq be a convenient paper tiger to distract from the abysmal failure to find these bastards? Gee, I wonder...

Saddam has been successfully contained for more than a decade, he's weaker now than he was before Desert Storm. All this pious concern over broken commitments to the UN is sweet and all - but the UN and the Weapons Inspectors are asking for more time to perform the Weapons Inspections that will determine if Saddam is in fact hiding weapons of mass destruction. Remember innocent till proven guilty? Granted, that doesn't even seem to apply to American citizens any more, much less other countries...

The discovery of a case of empty warheads proves that the inspectors are doing their job effectively. LET THEM DO THEIR JOB!

When right wingers - who make a game of insuring that the UN is as ineffective and unutilized as possible - speak movingly of the sacredness of UN comittments - it makes my oatmeal hit the wall.

And this time we really mean it...

http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/15016.htm

Today's paper carried the observation (don't have a link handy) that one motive for Bush's Push for War Right Now is that the winter is apparently a more salutory time for invading Iraq than the much hotter spring & summer. I don't recall that being much of a factor during the Gulf War but that's what the man said.