smooth

Now we seem to be getting somewhere, Dragonlich.

We can whittle at this concept of power and maybe come to a consensus.

The administration's plans to reshape the Middle East (not necessarily for oil interests, more along the lines of instituting or instigating democracratic institutions) have been available for a few years now--I'm not spouting off conspiracy theory junk. You can check the validity of that claim or I can pull up the sources if need be. Those plans and the obvious demonstration that he had fallen out of U.S. favor must have indicated to Saddam that his days were limited. At some point in time he began to illegally squirrel oil-for-food money in off-shore accounts and under his bunk.

Now, Saddam may have rightly or wrongly felt this was the day of reckoning. Regardless, to capitulate to U.S. demands (and remember that we *did* become increasingly agitated while the U.N. backpeddled which also may have signalled to Saddam that this was, in fact, the endgame of his regime) would have weakened his domestic rule. Here you make the conclusion that had he complied Saddam would have remained in power. I, however, claim that either the U.S. demands would have eventually risen to the point that he would be emasculated in front of his people and they would have revolted against what was already predicted (correctly) to have been a brittle regime. It isn't implausible to think that Saddam would also believe that, if his people revolted, U.S. would help their cause unlike 1991.

Given the choice to either allow U.S. demands undermine his regime and lose power or play the victim I don't think I'm attributing too much intelligence to Saddam when I state his better option was to play the victim before the world and the Muslim population. My point is supported by the fact that very early on Bush made it *very* clear that regime change was the menu of the day--Saddam could leave nicely or we would follow through with force. Keep in mind that Saddam didn't have to be a realpolitik genius to gauge or next move even as far back as 10-15 years ago. He only needed to know the history of our (and the entire Western powers, for that matter) foreign policy in the region since the early 1900s to have a fairly broad yet accurate picture of the chain of events that led up to our present situation.

The point, Dragonlich, is that Saddam's regime's days have been numbered since they day we helped him come to power--the question has always only been when that day would come. He has likely been planning for the inevitable and his retention of power is as irrelevant to him as opposed to the billions of dollars he has been able to hide away *and* the waves of resentment the current situation has stimulated (notice--not *created*). What he couldn't have known was the level of technological advancements that have occurred in the past decade. Therefore, he might not be able to access said billions without alerting officials, they might be seized, the war only lasted mere weeks, etc. and any number of other unforseeables. *But the broad picture* as I've outlined surely isn't something intelligence planners couldn't have been working with.

This outline roughly resembles that of bin Laden's situation, as well. Not too much of a coincedence so much as the fact that their military training and operative planning has come from the same source--U.S. agencies. The irony that we trained various groups in the art of decentralization allow them to become amorphous in global networks--an attribute that makes their threat much more virtual and dangerous (I agree with Bush on that point).

btw, you keep asserting that his action (or non-action) justified U.S. actions. I'm not debating on whether the action was justified--that's a pointless debate since it has already occurred. The original quote I chose specifically limited my debate to your assertion that Saddam's refusal to provide evidence that he destroyed his illegal weapons is proof that he possessed them.