Yon's recap

Interesting points throughout, but scroll to the bottom for his take on the current Iraqi situation. I'm looking forward to more reports from the ground now that he's back in Iraq.

Socialized medicine at its best

When I argue with people about socialized medicine, the one thing they never seem to consider is what it means for individual lifestyle choices. If the government provides your care, what prevents them from demanding you take what they consider "healthy lifestyles?" Isn't it scary that they can actually withhold medical service until you do what they tell you too. Where's the choice?

This discussion is an excellent one on the topic, regarding how Britain's system has already shown us what might happen.

Why did he not let the Inspectors in?

I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine from Afghanistan the other day. While driving to pick up some programs for one of our classes we started discussing rational decision making theory and how it failed to explain Saddam's lead up to the 2nd Iraq War. After American and Coalition troops were actually moving into positions, after it had become quite clear that The American military, public and leadership were all sufficiently behind the President to ensure the invasion would go through, why did he no raise the white flag? I could think of only three possibilities to explain why Saddam refused to allow weapons inspectors unfettered access.
1. . He believed that the effect of bending to American and IAEA pressure for full inspections would be a greater threat to his power (through de-legitimization) than invasion. Whether he had WMD or not one of the effects would be the same. Bending to the IAEA would hurt his prestige or at least shake his image of invulnerability. Could he have possibly have viewed this option as more threatening than invasion? If he actually did have either WMD that he was unable to adequately hide or dispose of safely. (It is highly doubtful that, outside of a situation where "all hope was lost," he would have been exactly gleeful to just hand them over to his neighbors, American and International satellite technology would make undetected transferal and storage within the country difficult if not impossible, and even destruction would be difficult to disguise.) Even if this were true however, what would the actual penalties have been, and if he had them, why wouldn't he use them or at least threaten to use them? Regime change could not have been enforced if he acquiesced in surrendering said weapons. The only danger would have been the expansion and continuation of sanctions and the strengthening of internal or regional opposition due to his de-legitimization from bending to outside pressure.

2. He really believed that the Iraqi military and paramilitary forces would be able, or at least had a chance, to resist American and Coalition forces. This seems hard to believe after his personal experience during the 1st Gulf War and the American military's continual strengthening and Iraq's erosion. WMD might have changed the scales with the threat of a possible strike on Israel or American forces, but that did not occur. The issue is that tactical victory is not what would have been required. It is easy to believe that America's air of weakness and excessive "Force Protection" groomed during the 90s (Somalia and the Balkans provide great examples), had been sufficiently erased by our strong reaction to 9/11, but this is likely far from the truth. The low level, low casualty Afghan campaign did not strain the homefront, and it definitely did not have the ambiguities of the invasion into Iraq. The only explanation that holds water for me is that Saddam honestly believed that the possibility that America would turn tail after significant casualties (even in victory) and no evidence of the stated goal (WMD). Either the estimated probability of this was exceedingly high or Saddam's hold on his own population and power structures was much more tenuous than we have been led to believe.

Just my thoughts.