January 27 + 3 days to let the rest of the world decide what they’re going to do.
Since Bush cancelled his trip to Africa on January 10th, I say somethings being planned for right aroudn then.
My guess will be the 13th, Monday and all.
No later then Mid-March… (should the ‘M’ in ‘Mid’ be capitalized?)
I know this problem VERY WELL - it’s what I spend each and every working day on.
As one that may actually do some of the dirty work in this potential war, let me just say I’m all for it. And if you knew what I know, I daresay some of the opinions (based on ignorance, it should be pointed out) about it would change.
As to when it will start, I’ll offer up my opinion - approximately eleven long, wasted years too late.
Asked a couple of SF guys about this- late spring/early summer is when they are planning on the real shooting to start.
Shortly after Sharon is “re-elected” (yeah, I trust Israeli elections about as much as I trust Florida elections).
Tell us, Bluesman - what is the nature of this specialized knowledge of yours which would make us eager to kill one bunch of people whose dictator is a nasty person, vs. all the other bunches of people whose dictators are nasty?
What do a couple of guys in San Francisco know about it?
a) we know everything
I’ll say right about the beginning of Feburary. Still early enough to prosecute a war in the winter and late enough to garner additional support.
I go with March 1. They’ll wait till the February sweeps are over.
Well, I happen to work at the National Security Agency as an intelligence analyst, on this very problem, and I have a very high security clearance. THAT is the nature of my specialized knowledge.
But your sneering, back-handed slap about us being “eager to kill one bunch of people whose dictator is a nasty person, vs. all the other bunches of people whose dictators are nasty?”, shows a hell of a lot of ignorance of what this is all about. Nobody, not me or the commander-in-chief, is eager to kill anybody, and if you had anything on the ball here, you’d know that.
Immense time, trouble and expense is taken to NOT kill anybody, even when US forces are committed to battle, sometimes even when they’re enemy combatants, and even at the extremity of our own troops’ lives.
And finally, the indisputable fact that Saddam is a nasty dictator is only partially relevant here. What is more to the point is that he has signed and broken international agrements, and unless all you internationalists wish for the UN to become even more irrelevant in the world, it is time for somebody to do the heavy lifting and enforce the agreements.
So, the very moment Saddam made the decision to continue to develop WMD, he should have been forced to abide by his agreement, by force if necessary. Because he made that decision eleven years ago, THAT is why we’re overdue.
And if I keep reading here that some hand-wringers wish “that cooler heads would prevail”, I’ll throw up. Does anybody here really buy into the Dubya as Cowboy view? Or that the US is doing any of this over oil? Or that we just want to kill people?
Cooler heads have considered the situation, and this is what Saddam has forced us into. It’s that simple. If any of you foreign policy experts have a way for us NOT to go to war, AND for the world to NOT have to face a WMD-armed Saddam, let’s hear it.
Bluesman, I know you’re an airforce lifer and probably know a lot more than us civvies. That said, I wish to any diety you care to name that the commander-in-chief would show some evidence. Not to me, but maybe to some of our skeptical allies like Germany, through the UN or heck even some erstwhile opponents like China or Russia. Up to now, I’ve seen jack squat that would even sound like it might make a reasonable case instead of an excuse.
For example, if GWB were to get tacit approval from China that the UN had to go into Iraq to remove a threat as did occur during Afganistan, then I for one would accept that something needed to be done.
As for the OP, maybe GWB wants to drag it out a little longer so he doesn’t do like his daddy and peak too soon before the elections.
Arab News says Feb 21, 2003.
In what way could that possibly help him? Do you believe that, or is this a desperate cry for help mental health?
Even should he wish for a war to somehow magically help him politically, his military advisors would all resign before they let him commit us in the heat of the summer. Heat casualties would exceed battle casualties.
Ah, but in your world, ole Dubya just don’t care about us 'Merkin troops, do he?
The worst yet. Unless you were making a sick joke. In that case, welll…it’s still just kinda sick.
I think you might be susceptible to frustration here, Bluesman. Sad to say it, but your adult views won’t always carry the weight they have in the real world now that you’ve stumbled into this sandbox. Hope you’ll stick around, nonetheless.
“Sad to say it” of course meaning “a sad commentary on some of the infantiles dominating this playpen”.
You’re right, friend…I am WAAAAY frustrated by the invincible ignorance on this subject. In their rush to appear enlightened, the peace-at-any-price crowd are doing Saddam’s PR work for him.
Against the war? Hey, me too. But not if there is a savage jungle creature like Saddam in a position of unchecked power with WMDs. He must be removed, and the US is the only power on Earth that can do it. Do it we must. Right away.
Well, at the risk of hijacking my own thread even further away from the OP and into GD territory, let me address this (and try to get it back to the original intent, namely predicting the date of the start of hostilities, not whether such hostilities are warranted or the most prudent course of action–that’s another thread).
To state the peaceniks’ case more clearly (not that I am in the “peace at any price camp” as you call it … in September 2001, I was rather in favor of a MUCH harsher response in Afghanistan than the quite reasonable and restrained operation Bush undertook–so kudos to him and his team on that):
- State clearly the justification for the invasion of Iraq. Is it because Saddam has WMDs (in violation of his intl. agreements)? If he does, then
- the US govt. needs to produce the evidence that shows why we think he has WMDs. Simple.
- Unfortunately, the govt. has not been forthcoming about this. They have said, “we have evidence, and we’ll wait to see if the UN teams find out what we know.” Until the US govt reveals what this evidence is (which, it seems, won’t happen before Jan. 27), we give the world no reason to believe that we are invading for good reasons (enforcing intl. agreements) rather than bad ones (we want oil and more control over the region).
Surely you must see the dilemma.
- The other, huge problem, is the timing. Why now? Why not, as you pointed out, 11 years ago? There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Saddam is a greater threat to world stability and security in Dec. 2002 than he was in Dec. 2001, Dec. 2000, Dec. 1993, or will be in Dec. 2005. If such evidence exists, it needs to be produced and laid out clearly before the US public and the intl. community.
- In the absence of such evidence, it seems that the War on Terror and the military momentum we’ve gathered is being used as a pretext to eliminating a long-standing thorn in our side who–again, judging by the evidence that has been presented–has only the flimsiest of ties to intl. terrorism, and certainly far weaker ties than many other countries whom we consider “allies” (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Pakistan, for starters) and have not threatened with invasion.
That is the case, bluesman. I, for one, don’t understand why we didn’t hammer down Saddam’s door many years ago, as his cat-and-mouse weapons inspection games should never have been tolerated. The first refusal to open a site to inspectors back in the '90s should have equaled bombs over Baghdad, IMO. But since we seem to have fallen into a decade-long torpor, I would like to see a good reason for why we’re preapring for war NOW, in Dec. 2002. I’d even be happy if Bush said: “You know, we really should have invaded back in 1992, but we made a mistake in waiting so long. We thought Saddam would bow to the economic sanctions. But it didn’t work. We were wrong to wait ten years. So why now? Because Sept. 11 was a wake-up call to all of us that the world is still a dangerous place, and we just now woke up and realized that we’ve let a dangerous man flaunt the international community for far too long. We should have taken care of this ten years ago, but better late than never.”
toadspittle, since you acknowledge that Iraq’s behavior already warrants a military response, it’s hard for me to figure out what you’re unhappy about. Since Americans by and large already show willingness to support a war, is it just a question of packaging the US position in a neat little PR package for non-Americans? Is that what’d make you happy?