From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com>
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 21:06:14 +0800
To: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: AP [was: Re: Kiddie porn on the Internet] [NOISE]
In-Reply-To: <199609220708.AAA20288@dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199609221056.FAA27889@mailhub.amaranth.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In <199609220708.AAA20288@dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com>, on 09/22/96 at 12:09 AM,
   Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> said:

>>If it could the US would have assasinated Saddam by now. It can't because it
>>is too difficult to find out where exactly a person will be. 

>It's perfectly doable, it's just not politically expedient.
>One reason is that if they kill Saddam, they no longer have an
>excuse to keep threatening and attacking Iraq and making themselves look good.
>Another is that National Leaders have a tacit understanding between themselves never
>to assassinate other politicians [well, hardly ever....] If you break the taboo,
>you're implicitly inviting everyone else
>to go gunning for you, and it's too easy to do if there are enough
>people who really want you dead, especially well-organized people
>like a foreign army or spy service.

>If the US _had_ really wanted to assassinate Saddam, they could have
>hired professionals to do the job (like Mossad.)  Instead they
>killed 200,000 other Iraqis, including civilians, draftees, and a
>few tens of thousands of real soldiers.

You need to take into account the politics of the region. With Saddam gone you have
created a power vaccume that Iran would be all to happy to fill. It was for this
reason that durring the Gulf War the US & its allias (European & Arab) did not go to
Bagdad. They mearly wanted to knock Saddam down a notch or two not take him out.

I will agree with you about the taboo on political assassinations. Even the Mossad
are not involved in assassination of government leaders (they keep such actions to
rather nasty terrorist). The assassinations of government leaders that have taken
place in the region have all been from citizens of their own country.



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