Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Still waiting for a clue on that "correct path."

Okay, lets start out with these.

Its all a bit too late, don't you think? The die is cast... In anycase, I don't have much hope that this will turn out to be anything other than a distraction from th issue at hand. In other words, we will end up going on and on about these (below) options instead of discussing what is important, which is the correctness of the war IMHO.

I *would* further consider would be some combination of the following, if any of them stand up to close inspection:

1) Assassination of 'Saddam and sons' (You know that nifty airborne laser we have been working on?)
2) Using the current military pressure and/or restructuring* oil-for-food program to force a larger on-the-ground presence of westerners, preferrably in hospitals and schools teaching good secular western values and providing essential life-saving services. More expensive, but worthwhile, and would win in the long-run
3) Restructure* the oil-for-food program to allow better civilian access to medicin and food and continue the sanctions.
4) Allow the north of Iraq to break away into a soverign Kurdish democratic state. Escheat the northern oli-fields into the control of that state, allowing for a limitied war to do so, ruining Saddams ability to fund even a DDT factory.
5) In combination with one or all of those options, keep inspections on-going. Add to this some sort of humanitarian inspection using photography, sources on the ground and infiltration. Make sure this information lands in the hands of the Iraqi people. (air drops, etc) Log his crimes against humanity until the world is *forced* to come to consensus on his removal or the Iraqi people do it.
6) Wage covert War on Saddam. Keep quietly killing his trusted advisors so they either get too scared and kill him, or he has no henchmen left.

*: Reform of the sactions could include secular or (if such even exist:) moderate islamic charities being put in charge of the distribution of the food and medicine yielded by the oil-for-food.

Now all of these are first approximations. I think all of them deserve consideration and many will turn out to be intractable. I am certain, However, that the proposed war is NOT the right thing to do in this context REGARDLESS of the tractability of the options I listed.

Davin L.

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