Clutching straws

Hobbes

I see Bush is now claiming that Saddam is funding Al-Quida, depsite the fact there is no evidence except so called evidence pulled from people being held without trial. Plus that AQ and SH are known sworn enemies by pretty much the world.

gandalf

Look Hobbes everyman and his dog knows that the Americans are going in and probably before Novembers Congressional elections. This whole thing is a sham, yes I do think that Saddam does have some Biological & Chemical weapons (I don't feel that he is as close as Georges Dog Tony says he is to having "the Bomb").

The man has remained in power for years so he is no fool (he is a evil bastard) he is not going to use those weapons when he knows that Isreal and the US with return the favour with major interest. There is a danger if the US continue on the path they are going and pen him into a corner and he feels he has no alternative that he does use them as a last desparate act. Why don't the US finish their action against Al-Queda or is that not newsworthy anymore.

Gandalf.

(opps I forgot to mention OIL)

DiscoStu

hmm bin laden a shia muslim, the many many fatwas against saddam hussain, the gasing and bombing of the shi-ites after the gulf war. we are now expected to belive that those two boys are bestest friends. come on. all we have to do is look at the tribal infighting in afgahastan between different branches of the muslim faith. (spellings are probably wrong)

dathi1

hmm bin laden a shia muslim,

He's a Sunni (was) but belongs to a strict disciplined group within the Islamic faith called Wahabi. Hussein is a non believer and just uses God now and again when the going gets tough. His government is an off-shoot of Arab Socialism called Bathisim which is secular (hence the women in Baghdad with no headscarves and lipstick etc..) and doesn't go down to well with both Islamic Fundamentalists and The Yanks.

DiscoStu

a bit of wrongness on my part but the point is still valid. bin laden and sadamn are not, can not and will not be buddies.

bonkey

Originally posted by gandalf
he is not going to use those weapons when he knows that Isreal and the US with return the favour with major interest.

Depends on how much he hates the US.

If he's gonna lose the war anyway, then what does he care. His life is forfeit, he will be ousted from power, so exactly what does he care about the favour being returned.

Hell - it even would mean that he denies the US a victory, because you cant really "win" when you reduce the prize to glowing rubble.

jc

Shinji

Hussein is a non believer and just uses God now and again when the going gets tough.

You know, that's something that the yanks have tried desperately hard to cover up - they love to paint him as an AK-47 waving fundamentalist who is unstable and likely to blow everything to kingdom come because he thinks he'll have a one-way ticket to dinner with Allah if he dies doing war with the infidel.

The fact is that this is rubbish - he's a bad bastard, make no mistake, but he's not a crazy fundamentalist by any stretch of the imagination.

He certainly doesn't have a nuke, and is nowhere near being able to build one. President Tony's utterly ridiculous "dossier" claimed that he has the know-how to manufacture a bomb if only he got the parts - well jesus christ, this is hardly a shock given that most first year physics students could build a simple low-yield fission nuke! It's getting the parts that's rather more difficult really...

As for chem/bio weapons... Hard to say. The UN weapons inspectors aren't saying "sorry Dubya that's crap" officially, but a fair few of them have said unofficially that they don't think it's even remotely possible that he could have built up that kind of stuff in the past few years, and he DEFINITELY didn't have it when the inspectors were kicked out...)