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>But isn't "properly armed" the key here?
I am not sure he would not have succeeded in lifting the embargo - the way oil for food money was being used looked like he was certainly trying to buy influence.

But the sanctions leaked. Saddam had money. Lots and lots of money. North Korea has nukes, and there may be other coming available on the market. Saddam did not have to develop a bomb. He had the money to buy one. And he certainly had the mindset to use one - or to protect himself with the threat to use one.

The world consoled itself in 1936 that Germany would never be a problem because of the restrictions imposed by the Versailles treaty. ( well that and the "international community" having outlawed war with the Kellog-Briand pact. ) Churchill was considered a little crazy for being so obsessive about the idea that Germany was a threatening storm.

The point Perle and Wolfowitz were making was that like Hitler or Stalin Saddam was a danger because of who he was and the power ( money ) at his disposal. The difference was that while France folded like a cheap card table in 1939-40, Israel would have responded a bit more robustly.

We won't know, of course, whether they were right or wrong and I dare say if Churchill had been PM in 1936 and stood up to Hitler it would probably have been considered crazy talk by 1945 to say that if Germany had been allowed to finish rearming 6 million Jews would have been killed, but there would have been a lot of people wondering if the two years of war to take out the Nazi regime and all the suffering that had cause was worth it.

Saddam was playing the 'international community'. He was going to get out of the box. Somebody was going to stop him. It was a question of who and when. Ugly as this whole thing has been, and mistaken as some of the tactical decision were, it still may have been the historical branch with the least cost in human misery in the long run.


>Saddam had northern and southern "no fly" zones for years.
>Saddam had an embargo that hurt him more than we thought despite the cheating that was going on.
>Sure, he was agitating to lift the embargo, but that doesn't mean that he would have succeeded or that success would have opened up the flow of arms full bore.
>I also have to wonder just what a "small force" would have proven, exactly, against Saddam. Not much as far as attacking North Korea is concerned, for sure. Don't know about iran, but suspect that they are better equipped than Saddam was.
>Wolfowitz' heart may have been "in the right place", but it really didn't fit "today". [I've seen both Wolfowitz and Perle being interviewed many times and one thing I have to give both of them is that they are very honest in their words]
>Wolfowitz may well be brilliant in his assessments of future situations, but unfortnately he delved into areas where his acumen is more questionable. In fact most of his prognostications proved to be dead wrong. His continued tenure, and by definition Rumsfeld's too, remains a source of amazement. It's one thing to allow a mistake and afford the opportunity for redemption but surely the death/maining of thousands of good people should have some impact on such thinking.
>
>Jim