Hesiod seems to think that
Saddam Hussein isn’t a direct threat to America.
Except that he clearly is:
When Bush says "Iraq is a threat to freedom," he really means that, since Saddam Hussein, even with a nuclear or any other weapon or weapons of mass destruction, can’t really invade or take over any single nation on the planet that actually can be considered "free" in the generally recognized sense of the word…
Now I’ve no love for Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud is a corrupt, amoral bunch of duplicitous terrorist-financing slimebags. I’d love to see them get their comeuppance. However, if Saddam Hussein uses a nuclear weapon to invade the Saudi oil field, he essentially has the world by the gonads. While losing the 10% or so of our oil we get from the Saudis would be bad, for the Europeans it would be nothing short of disastrous. Having Saddam Hussein in control of a significant chunk of the world’s oil means that he has a lot more power than he ever should have. If that scenario were to happen he could use oil as a weapon to ensure that he can fully remilitarize as he wishes. That also means that if Saddam Hussein wants us to pull out of Israel or have Al Gore do the chicken dance in a leather tutu on al-Jazeera, we’re going to be in one hell of a bind. The question that has to be asked is: do we allow this to happen or do we prevent it before it does? The answer, at least as far as I’m concerned, is fairly clear.
Saddam can’t take away your freedom directly folks. Someone’s going to have to do it for him.
Again, the above scenario disproves that. A nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein is a Saddam Hussein who can essentially do as he pleases. Moreover, all Saddam Hussein has to do is smuggle in a nuclear weapon or a canister of anthrax and he’s not only taking away our freedom, he’s taking away millions of lives. Critics say that Saddam would never do such a thing as it’s not in his rational interest. Yet betting that scenario won’t happen on the rationality of Saddam Hussein as an actor is a very poor bet to make. Furthermore, a year after an anthrax attack on the US Senate, we still have no idea who did it. With that kind of plausible deniability, one cannot guarantee that Saddam Hussein or his equally nutty son Uday might not decide to unleash a major anthrax attack at some point in the future.
We live in a time where vigilence is key. We cannot and must not ignore major threats to our national interest and to the lives of American citizens. Al-Qaeda is one threat, but just focusing on them is like locking the front door while leaving the back door swinging open. This war requires us to deal with every threat we can as we can, and Iraq is clearly one of those threats.
