The same people who think Saddam, who murdered thousands, if not millions, and started two major wars of aggression, should have been left in power, to control the problems in Iraq, are entirely willing to invade Pakistan, causing Musharrif (sp?), who has been a fairly decent but not perfect ally, to be overthrown one way or another. Absolute brilliance. NOT! If you think Iraq is a disaster, remember there are supporters of bin Laden in Pakistan, which HAS nuclear weapons, looking for a reason and an opportunity to over throw the current U.S. friendly regime. Imagine warlord buddies of bin Laden with control over nuclear weapons.
Virg's right, and no one can deny it, that Saddam killed quite some number of kurds, maybe even with poison gas. However, we were pretty quiet about the recent Turkish attacks on the same kurdish area. We're gonna get discredited on the save-iraq-from-genocide excuse if we allow that to continue.
Where the real problem lays with Musharref, is in whether or not he truly is friendly to the U.S., and not actually aiding/hiding the Taliban. We've had to rely heavily, perhaps too heavily, on Pakistan't Intel service, which was in tight enough with the Taliban during the Soviet occupation, to give the Tal's the lion's share of U.S. donated weapons' and logistic support. Myself, I would'nt trust Musharref(or any of his appointed ministers') farther than I could throw them.
Which brings us to the last. Pakistan might prove to be the real Pandora's box of the whole affair. An unstable govt. there, which could lose control of it's weapon stockpile, is one scenario. Another would be an attack/invasion by U.S. forces, which might bring about the voluntary release of Nuclear Weaponry to a determined terrorist group. Then, what do you do? I don't doubt that we could overrun Pakistan the same as Iraq, but even after the whole country's secured, and some nuke's are missing, What then? Especially if one of them is used in a major metropolitan city (
MUCH worse than 9/11) and you've already occupied the country of origin? Who do you invade in retribution then? It's when you look down this road, that you realize that it goes into a deep hole. I mean, I'm sure that any military option on the board would include eliminating/neutralizing any weapons' stockpiles that the Pak's have, but I'm sure that if they even sensed hostilities, that any parties interested in obtaining a weapon might be given access to them before any such strikes, or moved or protected from same.
I'm sure that the Pak's intel service's monitor our political and media venues. I'm sure that someone caught that pip by Obama. If so, They may already be preparing for a future confrontation with the U.S., in one way or another...
In this, I really hope that I'm wrong. I don't want anything like this to happen, It would really be the worst thing, to turn on the news, or open up a paper, and seeing a headline about an american city being wiped out by a bomb that ultimately, came from an allied state.
