[extropy-chat] IRAQ: Weapons pipeline to Syria

[Spike]

> On Oct 28, 2004, at 6:01 PM, Kevin Freels wrote:
...

> > Whether or not the WMDs were there or not is irrelevant. He 
> > acted as though they were.

I have a theory on why he did that.  Saddam believed he did
have WMDs.  Reasoning: he handed out millions of bucks to his 
top generals to develop advanced weapon systems.  He probably
had each of them estimate how much it would cost to develop
such and such a weapon.  He chose the one that gave him the lowest 
estimate, then gave that general about half to 2/3 the estimate.  
The general soon learned the two rules that we yanks already know: 

1) every weapon system costs waaaaay more than anyone expects.  

2) even if rule 1 is taken into account, it still costs waaay
more than anyone expects.

That general steals some of the money and burns thru most of the 
rest of it in fruitless research and still has no weapons program, so 
he takes a calculated risk: he buys something analogous to that system 
from Russia, paints over the hammer and curvy knife thingy, 
demonstrates the system to Saddam, who becomes convinced that 
Iraq now has such and such weapons.

The general is a top military guy, he isn't stupid.  Generals 
don't get to be generals by making mistakes.  He knows that 
should war break out, his gambit would be found out, at 
which time Saddam would round up the general's parents, wife, 
children, friends etc and torture them to all death in front 
of his eyes, then kill him.  Sooooo...  When the coalition
shows up, there is little real resistance.  The Iraqi army is 
nowhere to be seen.  The only actual fighting is from Muslim 
zealots, few of which are Iraqi.  The coalition is as much the
savior of the Iraqi generals as anyone else.

The generals thus escape Saddam's retribution; they have all
done the same thing under the same circumstances.  So Saddam, 
Baghdad Bob and the rest of the world are surprised to learn 
belatedly that Iraq really doesn't have much, they do not have 
the capability to produce advanced weaponry, but they do have 
a lot of stuff they weren't supposed to have, sold to them 
primarily by the Russians.  

Putin is understandably squirmy.  He didn't authorize the sale of 
arms to Iraq for fear of pissing off Bush and Blair, but suspects
that Russian weapons were sold to Iraq illegally, possibly
by Syria or other countries with which he did business.  Evidence:
the Iraqis have advanced Russian GPS jammers.  So Putin stalls as
long as he can, but when he knows the invasion is going to happen 
in a week or two, he moves quickly to cover his tracks.  He
makes arrangements to move the high explosives and anything 
else that might be found to be Russian, in a convoy of trucks 
to somewhere, anywhere, Syria will do.  This also gives the
Iraqi generals an out: they can claim their advanced programs
were squirrelled away in Syria.

Doesn't that theory fit all the observations so far?

Now here's the curious part.  Some of the anti-W crowd
was saying there were never any WMDs, but if you listen
closely to the tall guy, he doesn't actually make that claim.  
He made many claims that were close to that, but Skerry avoided
the position that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq because there
were no WMDs.  In a sense, Skerry is as much a hawk as Bush,
thereby giving away (in my mind) any advantage he had over W.
He didn't say he wouldn't have gone to war with Iraq, but rather
that he would have fought it better, or more sensitively or 
smarter or whatever.  I doubt that he would have done any
better, but it doesn't matter at this point.

In the last week before the election, Skerry comes out with
this big hootnanny about 400 tonnnnns of missing high explosives, 
which were not allowed under the 1991 treaty, which had to come
from somewhere since Iraq generally doesn't manufacture that
stuff, which is admitting that Saddam was illegally buying munitions
and illegally stockpiling dangerous stuff and chipping away
at the UN sanctions, and had to be stopped, which is all W
and Blair were claiming to start with.

This tactic by Skerry divides the anti-W crowd; it cuts off 
those who maintained that there was not sufficient justification 
for invading Iraq.  

Now we yanks are faced with a choice tomorrow of two hawks.  
We can go out and vote for the libertarian Badnarik if we want,
but we know that either way our troops are stuck in Iraq
for at least another four years.  And even Badnarik has no
really convincing plan for how to get out of Iraq.  If we
just pack up and leave, the Sunnis and Shia, who hate each
other and hate christians nearly as much, will surely go into 
civil war.  You can bet the first casualties are the christians.
Both W and Skerry know that if he were to allow the Iraqis 
to slay 3E6 Iraqi christians, then that candidate would
be trounced in 08 by someone who is still more hawkish than
either W or Skerry.

Suggestions anyone?  Samantha have you the answers to this?
I am all ears.

spike