The land of the flighty

[Occhidiangela]

Plus that nobody, even the boneless chicken goverment of the Netherlands, would agree with such a thing.
So there is no international support.

There is no critical international support among nations who matter -- China, South Korea, Japan -- for attacking North Korea. There hasn't been for some years. That lack of agreement to act seems to me why President Clinton tried the tactic he did. Try something new. It didn't work either.

Still in Kim's point of view taking a nuke as protection is a good thing to do, you must agree with that?

From his point of view, being in the nuclear club does at least two things: it gives him a deterrent, and a position of strength from which to bargain. If I was in his seat, I'd want both. We seem to agree on that.

As to the prewar debate, we both had reasons for believeing as we did. I was very surprised that no further significant WMD programs were uncovered. My reasons for believing their existence was in the continued action of the UN, the re opening of the inspection process, what appeared to be a consensus among the Security Council that the issue wasn't resolved ( or the sanctions could be lifted, which they were not). Powell's brief, 12 years of Saddam's deliberate bluff (he sure fooled me, and apparently, he fooled his own generals. I recommend Cobra II if you have not read it. You will like it, I am sure, as it paints Pres Bush in a poor light, likewise Rummy and Cheney.) Absense of Saddam's compliance in full was a strong indicator of something still being about. The problem of uncertainty remains as yet another problem that decisions makers face that is all to conveniently ignored once the hindsight moment arrives.

You believed for reasons of your own, to include "I don't like Bush, therefore he (and the estimate) must be wrong."

We both guessed based on the information available. Congrats on your accurate guess. It didn't stop me from getting deployed.

Occhi