Guiscard wrote:flashleg8 wrote:I personally think Saddam played a bad bluff about whole the WMD thing. On and off since the first gulf war he'd been letting weapons inspectors in for a bit, then throwing them out until the US got too pissed then he'd let them back in a bit till it cooled down, repeat ad infinitum. This worked fine pre 9/11 because no-one (the UN) really wanted a war over something so minor as a few broken UN-resolutions - hell half the planet is in violation of one or more resolutions. But Saddam badly misjudged the US's change in perspective after 9/11. The US government basically had a mandate from its people to do whatever it wanted in foreign policy. The regime clearly wanted to settle some old scores and expand its influence in some areas (A pro US Afghanistan would give influence to the resource rich "stans" of the former USSR - Iraq adds to Middle East oil countries in US sphere of control). Saddam does his usual trick of stopping weapons inspector access to look tough to his neighbors and people, and when the US escalated the diplomatic threats he gave the impression he did have WMD (or at least didn't cave immediately to the demands and deny their existence). It suited him to have the world think he was “tooled up” as this gave him international and regional prestige. In hindsight this was all posturing and bluffing.
I personally think North Korea is going down the same route. I don't believe they are nuclear capable at the present, and their missile testing shenanigans etc is really an attempt to pretend they have better defenses than they really do.
Yeh this is pretty what the whole situation suggests to me too. You talk a lot of sense.
Saddam must have been a shitty poker player then.