just in time of the deadline and says that he doesnt have any nuclear or biological weaponry. ITs gonna take weeks to check the dossier and then months to prove it right/wrong. in this time couldnt he just go ahead and kill us all? do you reckon he's lying or might we actually be (a bit) safer than what we thought?

hmmm ... well, we shall see.
so what if he ~could~ kill us all in the meantime?

what i'm wondering is, did he do what most people i know do and leave it right til the last minute, then pull an all-nighter?

- qo.

You think he's been cramming Quiet One.

"in this time couldnt he just go ahead and kill us all? "

Not if we put the whole world in stasis while Iraq got a 10 year lead. He's just a boogey man manufactured for political capital in the US and as a divesion to our economic meltdown.

Think of your H.S. football team playing the Dallas Cowboys, hell-actually, think of the 7 & 8 year old Pee-Wee football team playing the Cowboys and you'll have a more accurate picture about the actual threat level.

hmmm .... i don't entirely agree BT, but its a colourful comparison. saddam has the very real capacity to kill. that includes us all; american, brit, even old belgian UP (btw, UP, if you read this, what's with the little show in brussels Grande Place?!?!). however, so does bush. so does blair. hell, even I have the ability to kill. we all do.

personally, i consider myself far safer now than i did ten years ago, living in germany under threat from irish republicans.

- qo.

should empasise that i was not talking about saddam (or myself) having the capability of killing ALL of us, but that any of us could be killed by any of those individuals listed. sorry if that's confusing.

- qo.

You should agree...given the fact that for him to be able to do something now, the 60% of his country that's regularly flown over in the No Fly zone and all the Sattelites, all the border offensive capabilities that have been brought to fore...would all have to fail. I don't see that happening.
He's farting and we have some one able to say if it was Hummus or Babagnosh!

Iraq is using this to give them time to decide what they are going to do. He can't attack America from Iraq, but he can use his weapons to wage war against ther Mid. East countries, and go into Europe. If he has the chance to wage a war he will. That is why we should have got him out in the Gulf War, or when Clinton was president [ Thank God he is'nt anymore ]. Even though the war will cost us 9.9 billiob to 2 trillion, it is a price we must pay. He has terroist allies, and could form with alliances with every country that hates us. We will probaly have to bomb them like we did with Japan, which was the right thing to do.

Just to clear up the topic here a bit, the dossier was submitted a day in advance of the deadline. It does contain little *new* data, mainly double use facilities. Everything from factories that make slippers to factories that used to assemble artillery shells, to research labs.

Iraq is more likely to attack a western country after they have been provoked. For all you know, they could already have the pieces in place - spread throughout the world, and are waiting for the Americans to fall into their own trap. If Iraq had WMD, what good would they do in their own country? Iraq requires Arab unity to survive, why would they risk war with their neighbours, whom are mostly sympathetic to their cause? If Iraq every sucessfully created true WMD (not just mustard gas, anthrax, vx, sarin, etc which, btw, many other countries also have) they would no longer be in Iraq. It would however, not be in the hands of terrorists.

The Iraqi regime is a secular regime, not a radical Islamic regime. Saddam has his own ability to smuggle and plot, not requiring Al-Qadea or any other terrorist cell to do it for him. Is it really worth up to 20% of America's GDP to go to war when all it will do it provoke an attack on American soil? It is worth dragging the foreign policies of America through the mud once again to prove that America is the big bad boy on the block? I wonder what 2 trillion dollars would do to the proud economy? 2 trillion in health care, education, perhaps even aid to the people who need it!

The only problem is that if America attacks a precedent will have been set, allowing one country to do whatever it wants to secure it's own livelyhood, regardless of who stands in their way. What happens when Russia decides that the republics that broke away from the USSR can't handle themselves and may become a threat? What happens when India finally had enough gal to invade Pakistan to root out those militants it says they support? What happens when China decides reunification with Tiawan has to happen, and now? You'll be opening Pandora's box. Everything will become a "What's best for me?" society. Thanks America, you rock.

And that political/economic acumen was honed where, exactly? Are they printing poli/economic trivia on Coco Puffs these days?
You mean he can form an alliance and grow to be what, 1/5 of our military might?
Thanks God Clinton isn't president!?!? Oh, I see....that $Billion dollar SURPLUS and WORLDWIDE RESPECT was such a bother....now we're all happy with the $160Billion in the hole we're in, towns/cities going BANKRUPT, states running billions in the hole AND a clown representing us on the world stage. Yeah, great times for sure!

[Edited on 9-12-2002 by Bout Time]

"clown representing us "

lol didnt Bush get the lowest score on the presidents IQ test?
anyways, its better than what we got- some queen who sits on her a$$ all day and big eared Blair who never keeps any of his promises.

WORLDWIDE RESPECT? You have to be joking! What respect? Do you not think the plan for 9/11 was well under way during the Clinton years? What about the first failed attack on the WTC? The embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? All during the Clinton years. And how did he respond? Lob a couple of dinky cruise missles into Afganistan. That's like hitting a hornet's nest with a stick and running away. Of course, he couldn't be bothered with trivial diversions like National Security. He was too busy getting his daily hummers from Monica as she knelt under the desk in the oval office. Yeah, there's a man who deserves the respect of the whole world...

I tend to think that Saddam has pulled slightly ahead on this dossier business ( and we must never forget that whatever other human attributes he may lack, this man is not un-intelligent).
He beat the deadline and presented what must be about as useless a document as one can imagine. This nonsense about dual-use facilities: where a yoghourt factory, because it has fermenters, could double as a germ-warfare plant.
I would imagine that every possible incriminating name of a foreign supplier has been included, and the US went ahead and found itself custodian of the only copy which will then leave Hussain free to insist that the Americans have "doctored" the document.