DR. MURAVCHICK
Well, the time for military action is overdue with Iraq. That is, Saddam Hussein has had 12 years to give up his weapons of mass destruction, as he promised in writing to do when we had the ceasefire that ended the Gulf War that began with his aggression in 1991.
He has failed to live up to that. He has starved his own people with sanctions in order to hang on to these weapons of mass destruction.
The U.N. unnecessarily gave him one last chance in a resolution this past fall. The disarmament is not supposed to be a matter of hide and seek; it's supposed to be a matter of Iraq coming forth and giving up these weapons. That is what it was supposed to be for the last 12 years. He was given one last chance. He came in, in the beginning of December, with 30,000 pages of pure garbage and obfuscation, giving back documents that inspectors had rejected five years ago as not being complete and not being truthful.
He made perfectly clear that he is not coming clean. He hasn't changed his spots. Which should hardly be a surprise given the nature of his rule for as long as he has been in power.
He is a cruel, vicious dictator who has abused his own people, who supports terrorism around the world, who has invaded his neighbors and who wants his weapons. It's time for him to go.
MR. BORGIDA
Dr. Muravchick, I'm going to cut you off for just a second. You have plenty of time. Dr. Eland, your turn. You get about a minute to rebut.
DR. ELAND
Well, sure Saddam should disarm. But the real question is: Should the United States unilaterally invade another country to get it done? There are other methods of getting it done, and I think the world, our allies, are very uneasy about this. Some of them are now saying that.
The American people, in the latest poll, 70 percent said they would like to give the U.N. more time, the inspections more time. And so I think the Bush administration is really rushing this.
The Bush administration never really wanted to see a thorough inspection. What they wanted to do was have an international stamp of approval for their invasion, and they haven't gotten it yet, because France, China, Germany, are now raising questions about whether the United States should unilaterally invade another country to get this done. And sure, Saddam is an evil dictator. Sure, he should resign. But we need to work through the inspection process. The President went down this road, and now the President is suffering the effects of it. But he made the choice to go down the multilateral road and he is kind of stuck there.
MR. BORGIDA
I know you're dying to jump in, Dr. Muravchick.
DR. MURAVCHICK
Well, this is just silly in many ways. It's silly because Dr. Eland says there are other ways to do it. Well, what other ways? Come on, tell us.
There are no other ways to do it. We've tried for 12 years. We've tried sanctions. We've tried inspections. We've tried diplomatic pressure.
It's perfectly clear to everybody, and even to you, although you're pretending otherwise, that there is no other way to do this.
And we are not doing it unilaterally. Even if we do it without a U.N. resolution, we're going to do it with Great Britain, we're going to do it with Turkey, we're going to do it with a whole handful of states in the region. That's not unilateral. That's a coalition of the willing.
DR. ELAND
Well, I don't think there is going to be Turkish participation with troops. They may give us limited bases. Even the Turks are saying they will limit the number of troops.
A lot of people in Turkey are not enthralled with this. The government certainly isn't, but the Turkish public opinion isn?t, and our other allies aren't on board either. And nobody wants to tell the big superpower that they don't want to do it, but there are a lot of countries that are very nervous about this.
And frankly, as long as the inspectors are in Iraq, he is going to have a hard time getting nuclear weapons. He may still have biological and chemical weapons, but the question is really larger than that: Can we deter them, even in the worst case, even if Saddam gets nuclear weapons?
We have thousands of nuclear warheads. He has a home address, unlike terrorists. And so, why can't we deter him? Why did this change after September 11th? For any number of years after the Gulf War, we deterred and contained him. And now, all of a sudden, after September 11th, the Bush administration figures, boy, this is a good chance to get Saddam.
MR. BORGIDA
Dr. Muravchick, jump in.
DR. MURAVCHICK