Originally Posted by: PonyOnemeanwhile, North Korea is now testing real nukes, not just theoretical ones... and... we're all tied up politically and militarily in a place we shouldn't be tied up in, at least not in the way we are.

North Korea's (or rather, Kim Jong Il's) #1 priorety is and has been self preservation for a number of decades. North Korea has not a snowball's chance in Hell of winning a war with the US, especially with China being so eager to keep North Korea's power limited and to keep its business with the US and the rest of the world. They can't feed their peole and they can't mobilize their army without fuel from China.

So, if we hurt them, they can hurt us back, but if they pre-emptively attack us, we can end them. They know this. There is no reasonable impetus to choose war over diplomacy with North Korea now or ever so long as North Korea's policy remains concerned with nothing more than 1. staying in power and 2. maybe getting some food aide.


However, Saddam's agenda was totally different. He was concerned with offensive technology with which to to unite the Arab word via a pan-arabic war.

And this puts us in a pickle.

Either we're to be internationalists and therefore we must honor our treaties with other nations (including our promises to help defend Saudi Arabia, Israel, Kuwait, Turkey and a multitude of other nations in the region) or we're to again embrace the failed policy of Isolationism.


So, while I don't think Bush was outright lying when he said he thought Iraq had WMDs; lord knows that analysts within the CIA agreed with this (as was once confirmed by Hillary Clinton in a comment to the media), but it wouldn't surprise me if his administration fudged the immediacy of the threat in order to fight the war at a time when we could win it with less lives lost.

I don't neccessarily agree with it, but I also recognize that as a nation, we save an average of less than 10% of our annual income; it is not at all reasonable to expect Americans to think in the long-term.