USA Gets WoMD, why not others?

Post-9/11 Era Forum

Thought this might be a worthy, separate sub-topic..

The old proliferation treaty and accord between Britain, Russia, China, USA, and I think France (used to test in the south pacific)
is another item that provides these weapons to the Big Five.

Acutally anyone is allowed to possess these weapons. If you dont believe me just look at Pakistan and India who have recently gone nuclear. There was no retaliation. There wasnt even talk of it. Why? Because any country is free to develop and possess WoMD. Its just frowned upon heavily by the world community who uses diplomatic and economic deterrants to persuade countries that having them is not in their best interest.

Like I said, any country has the "right" to possess them. Well, except Iraq. Why? Well because that is what they agreed to as part of a cease-fire agreement. If you cant figure that out you are pretty dense.

Unless they signed that treaty.

"Here, here's why we're different: we exercise and demonstrate restraint and responsibility where others do not."

Name the one and only country to use nuclear weapons in battle?

Also, learn from the fact that japan is now a world powerhouse economy, and has been backed by america for 50+ years even after we had to use such drastic measures.

Does that sould like a dictator, or a sadistic country?

Do you think any of the stalinistic style dictators we have fought would have ever done the same?

No - they would have destroyed the defeated populace

It's funny you should use "stalinistic-style dictators", since the U.S.S.R. was a monstrous, repressive regime which was nuclear-armed. Yet nevertheless, they in fact did show restraint and never used their nuclear weapons in battle. So the answer is, yes, a horrendous regime would have shown restraint with nuclear weapons, which is proven by the fact that they did do so. They also were defeated not by unilateral invasion, but by containment and concerted pressure.

Fair enough. My point was just that it did not take an invasion or "decapitation" to change the regime.

I think it is pretty early to claim about what the result of either option will be. The history of American-lead regime changes is pretty mixed. While Germany and Japan did well, there are many other regime changes we have effected, especially in South America, and few of these are models of democracy. I would hope for the best for the Iraqis, but don't count your chickens before they hatch.

As for Saddam's killings, I'm curious what numbers you are referring to. Saddam certainly did commit atrocities against the Kurds which killed many thousands -- mostly during his U.S.-backed war against Iran in the 80's. However, the Kurds have for years been a de-facto independent democracy, who have been relatively safe from Saddam (protected in part by the no-fly zone). I'm not sure if you are doing this, but I have seen people add up the Iraqi casualties from the Iran-Iraq war together with the Kuwait war as well as the actions against the Kurds -- and then act as if all this killing was continuing to happen just as it did over a decade ago. That simply isn't true.

There is also an essential contradiction in your prediction that invasion will be easy, compared with the stated justification for war. Bush claimed in his speeches that Iraq was incomparably dangerous to the world, such that not attacking immediately would be "suicide" for us. I tend to agree with your assessment: Iraq is an impoverished nation which I suspect will be relatively easy to conquer, and it is not at all a fearsome threat to the U.S.