Who is worse..Saddam or Kim Jung Il.

IMHO it’s Kim Jung Il.

Read up on Kim Jung Il. The man is a monster and a maniac. He has wmd, he supplies terrorists, he subjegates his people. All the things we accuse Saddam of doing.

But of course it’s Saddam we are going after. And negotiating with the scumbag Jung.

Another of lifes quandaries.

Convince me Saddam is the one we should be going after.

Last I checked, Kim Jong Il’s country still bordered the People’s Republic of China and, again last I checked, said People’s Republic wasn’t all that enthused with folks attacking/occupying countries bordering it. Another thing is that the PRC has yet to fire missiles at the civilian population of Israel in a lame stunt to get other countries on their side (well, the government and people of Iran fell for it, but that has a lot to do with how lame that government is).

So we are going after Saddam because he is the easier target??

Yes. Militarily, it will be orders of magnitude easier to deal with Iraq then with North Korea. We know the area. We already have air superiority, if not supremacy. We have large amount of prepositioned equipment in a region that readily lends itself to mechanized warfare, at which America is King. (Well, it’s not like we are attacking Israel any time soon! :slight_smile: ) Our Air Force isn’t too shaby, and sure like flying in a area where the terrain is largely irrelevant.

North Korea, on the other hand, is believed to have several nuclear weapons. Its terrain lends itself to defense. It has large, even if outdated, armed forces. These forces are believed to be made of sterner stuff then the ‘I surrender to you, fierce Italian cameraman’ Iraqi soldiers.

We can defeat N.Korea. Of that, there is little question. But the cost? It will be lower once we can reposition our forces after the fall of Saddam. It will be lower if the PRC and Russia start shouldering some of the responsibility for dealing with their neighbor.

Solutions that are easily applied to one problem aren’t neccesarily easily applied to others.

So, what y’all are saying is we should pick and choose what evils in the world. Regardless of how bad that evil is? We should only fight the easy evils?

Then why aren’t we going after Mugabe?

I think you’re overlooking China here. We’d get pretty upset if China tried to attack Mexico. If Mexico deserved to be attacked, we could do it ourselves, thank you. Same goes for North Korea.

No, we are going after (in a military sense) the ‘evils’ in the world that affect us, and we can deal with at a reasonable cost. Right now, the estimated cost of fighting North Korea outweighs the estimated benefit. This is not set in stone, and can change.

He is an ass, that’s for sure. But what did he do to us? I’m sure you’ll hear different from others here, but I am a big proponent of not dicking around where we have no vital interests. We would pretty much have to occupy much of the world if we were trying to stamp out all ‘evil’.

Explain to me what Saddam can do to the US please other than hitting Israel. Jung has the capabilty of hitting our allies in Southeast Asia. Japan and Taiwan.

What rock have you been hiding under? If you wish to refute everything the US and UK have been saying for the past 6 months then go for. I for one would get a kick out of how you would contend that Iraq couldn’t do what they say.

Could I have a cite where either said Saddam could do anything to the US?

So as long as NK can’t touch Israel we look the other way? Has a ring of truth to it.

That and Jung didn’t try to kill daddy.

Saddam took a chunk of our oil supply (Kuwait) back in the day, and threatened another (Saudi Arabia). We had two choices then:

A) Send him a ‘Congratulations on your victory!’ card, and an order for however many barrels of crude. Light and sweet, please, hold the fuel oil.

or

B) Liberate Kuwait, and eliminate the threat to Saudi Arabia.

We chose plan B, which set of a series of events, most important among them being that we now had a seriously pissed-off Saddam still in power, looking to develop more effective WMD.

Part of the cease-fire agreement we made with him contained provisions that he would eliminate all actual WMD, delivery means, and production means, and for the verification of the same.

He has not lived up to his part of the cease-fire agreements, which means he is still a threat to a large chunk of our oil supplies.

He no longer posses any credible threat through conventional armed forces; Like most dictators, he values percieved loyalty over effectiveness in his armed forces, and it showed, and still shows. The lone partial brigade we keep in Kuwait is more then plenty to deter any future conventional attack.

But WMD change the game considerably, maybe. Nobody really knows for sure, since modern WMD have rarely been used in modern conflict. VX could cause massive casualites among our forces. Or it could be detected and countered with those goofy autosyringe thingees. Who knows, and I won’t even touch on the potential of Iraq covertly supplying even small quantities to terrorists.

Still, to be on the safe side, he is forbidden from having them. According to some sources, he has them. According to others, he does not. He is not being forthcoming, so buh-bye.
North Korea, on the other hand, can be starved into submission, even though that carries some dangers. Still, we have options in dealing with N.Korea; Our options in Iraq have been exhausted over the past 12 years.

:rolleyes: Not from me you can’t. I do not play these childish games. What you can do, however, is turn on the TV or check any web site that talks of world events. Or maybe you can check one of the hundred debates about it already on this forum with neat cites and everything.

Brutus…Your post makes no sense and doesn’t address the question. Why should we starve NK? Jung is doing it for us.

Saen…Why am I not surprised you can’t back up you words.

It was an attempt to answer your 'What can Iraq do to us…" question, but I see reading comprehension is not your strong suite?

I can read read very well thank you. Forgive me, but I don’t see any thing in your post that says what he can do to us. By forces I guess you mean our troops in foriegn countries. They can only be hurt because they are there. Let’s get back on the OP. Damage to the US.

Oil. Control of Oil. Supply of Oil. Flow of Oil. Price of Oil.

Perhaps you can read very well; however, that does not mean you understand well at all.

So it’s not because Saddam is evil?

Well knock me over with a feather.