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I'm honored.


Ah--there it is. You folks are disturbingly polite over here on this board; it's taken me a good month or so to be called delusional. And AFP even called me honest first--an experience that's at least as unfamiliar to me as voicing disagreements is to you.

But one takes what one can get. After all, more people have been to Paris than I have.


Please elaborate; I'm not quite grasping your point.


Documented by whom? If you're talking about the same documents everybody else is, you mean a set of Iraqi documents and a set of UN estimates (in some cases based on earlier versions of those same Iraqi documents). Wouldn't you agree that Iraqi documents voluntarily submitted aren't among the most credible known sources of information? And hopefully we also agree that almost everything that comes out of the UN is to be taken with a grain of salt.

Personally, I'm a bit skeptical, for a number of reasons. First, biological and chemical weapons have a finite lifespan. They keep their potency for a few years and are then useless. It's been 12 years since Gulf War I; if he had any chem or bio agents in 1991, they're not much good now. Secondly, while it's comparatively easy to make poison gas or isolate a deadly germ, it's a much bigger, more complex task to weaponize it. It's a big enough operation to make it tough to hide. If he had been manufacturing more weapons to replace the ones that decayed, my suspicion is that after 12 years we'd know about it.

And don't forget that there are many other countries that much more reliably pose a significantly greater threat to us right now. If we were really worried about threats, we'd be after those countries, not Iraq.


Not much. It killed--what, 3 people? 5? I forget. A single digit, though, in just under a year and a half. Death is never a light thing, but getting nationally wigged out about anthrax is almost an order of magnitude sillier than getting nationally wigged out about children being killed in gun accidents.


First, there's a substantial possibility that those chemical warheads have been imaginary since the very beginning. Second, even if they exist, after 12 years they're not particularly dangerous. Third, it would be just as silly for him to attack us with chemical weapons as it would be for him to conventionally bomb New York City. We'd blow him to smithereens, and he knows it. (And that war even I would support.) Fourth--once again--there are other countries belligerent to the US who actually do have real, up-to-date chemical weapons, and we're ignoring them.


Equal footing with the US is overstating the matter just a hair, don't you think?

Nuclear weapons are just as susceptible to deterrence as any other weapon.


There's a fundamental perspective disconnect here.

Us talking about what we should allow Iraq to have is roughly analogous to me talking about whether I should allow you to make love to your wife, or whether the state should allow you to keep and bear arms. Iraq is a sovereign nation; the US has no right to allow or disallow anything to it. If Iraq attacks us, we should squash it; but as long as it minds its own business, we need to mind ours.

The UN claims to have such a right. If the UN would like to try exercising it, then I say let 'em; but as I said before, we should have no dog in that fight.


As it turns out, I don't agree with France about much. I'm not particularly interested in keeping him contained. I am interested in keeping him from attacking the US, but I have complete faith that the same strategy that has worked for all our other enemies for so long will work just as well for him: the credible threat of quick and overwhelming retributive force.

(Note, in case it's necessary: what Baby Bush is cheerleading for right now is not retributive force, but aggressive force. There's a difference.)

Finally, let's please not forget why Saddam is honked off at us in the first place. We're clear on the other side of the world from him, and he'd much rather occupy himself killing and torturing other Iraqis, selling his oil at highwayman rates, and using the proceeds to rebuild Babylon. Why is he even interested in us?

Because we're starving and bombing his country, that's why. Why are we doing that? Skip skip skip...because he invaded Kuwait. Why did he invade Kuwait? Because the Papa Bush administration invited him to. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, do a Web search on "April Glaspie.") In other words, he's mad at us because we screwed him. Sure he's a lying, murderous tyrant; but chances are good that he'd be much less interested in us if we hadn't dealt so dishonorably with him.


I don't really understand what you mean by "a monopoly on the Constitution." But lest you make incorrect assumptions, please note that I am not among the Constitution's biggest fans. I think there are a couple or three fundamental problems with it, among which is the fact that it cannot be held morally or legally binding on anyone alive today except politicians and soldiers who have sworn to uphold and defend it.


Well, of course. (To the extent that it has been preserved, I mean, which seems to be less every day.) Were you under the impression that we disagreed on this point?


I'm not quite sure what you mean.


The United States used to be the greatest nation in the world. Perhaps it still is, but it's rapidly becoming a socialist police state just like the Soviet Union that Reagan called an Evil Empire.


Well, we agree about the backbone, anyway. He does have backbone. Fine, moral, and principled? Mmm, no, I don't think so. A fine, moral, principled man would honor his oath of office. Of course, that's not too resounding an indictment, because he's a politician by trade; and I can't think of a single fine, moral, and principled politician in Washington other than Ron Paul, who is something of a special case.


Wrong, wrong, wrong. Sorry to be so emphatic, but this is absolutely wrong. He's not going to war in the name of anybody; rather, he's sending tens of thousands of young American men and women to war in his name.