RE: Inability to see the enemy

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Feb 22 2003 - 22:52:09 MST

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    Mitch writes

    > Lee I believe I understand the point you have
    > presented. [But] Now I will ask again, just
    > to highlight this situation as reality.
    > Question: If America wars against Iraq, what
    > will those individuals and governments do to
    > retaliate against the United States? Will
    > this retaliation be effective?

    In my opinion, there is little they can do that
    they're not already doing. To be sure, various
    future terrorist attacks may claim, "This is
    in revenge for your conquest of Iraq!", but I
    think it's unlikely that additional people who
    don't already hate the U.S./U.K. will suddenly
    start to.

    On the contrary, there is a good chance that in
    that part of the world, folks respect strength
    even more than here. But aside from all that
    speculation, the means to attack the West---
    Iraqi WMD and al Qaeda money, which will find
    each other if they haven't already---will be
    damaged.

    Ron writes

    > [Lee writes]

    > > As for "today, yes, it's Iraq, but tomorrow it may be Iceland",
    > > that is so silly it hardly deserves comment. I can just see
    > > ten years of pressure from dozens and dozens of countries,
    > > innumerable U.N. resolutions, thousands of flights over
    > > Iceland to figure out just what those scoundrels are up to,
    > > etc., etc. ;-)

    > That isn't silly. The next place is never any place you thought
    > it would be.

    The world's intelligence agencies are pretty good. They knew
    what kind of problem Korea and Iraq would pose. Observe the
    American Intelligence Community's predictions made in 2000:

    http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/globaltrends2015/

    Not bad (though it's quite a bit to skim through). Anyway,
    Ron, some may have an inability to see the next enemy, but
    it would be absolutely incredible if any random nation, e.g.
    Iceland, was the world's next hot spot.

    Lee



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