Here’s a thought-problem for folks to chew on a bit.<\/p>\n
I watched Tim Russert on the hotel-room TV late Saturday night, interviewing James Fallows and another magazine editor who supported the war (sorry, was reading Tommy Franks’ book, and only paying half attention). Fallows, who I respect greatly, kept coming back to one point: “The inspections were finally working just before the war. We didn’t have to invade, we could have kept Saddam contained.”<\/p>\n
I keep hearing this from people, think this is a truly dumb statement, and since I think James Fallows is very smart want to toss the issue out here for discussion.Here are my points, and some questions:<\/p>\n
* In the end-game just before the war, Saddam was suddenly much more cooperative with the inspectors. But we had about 150 – 200,000 troops on his border. How long could we have kept them there, and what would the impact on the Arab world have been had we done so?<\/p>\n
* Containment and the various embargoes we had erected around Iraq were leaking, and leaking progressively more and more. At what point would they have become so leaky as to be ineffective?<\/p>\n
* Saddam was using the skimmed funds from Oil-For-Food to weaken the Western coalition, by bribing executives, journalists, and politicians. At what point would the political environment have become such that sanctions would have collapsed?<\/p>\n