Thursday, September 02, 2004
Does the Bush Doctrine make YOU feel safer?
I've been saying this for a year and a half now - it's good to see, though sad to know, that I'm not the only one who thinks the Bush Doctrine makes the world a scarier place.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration may think tough talk will discourage Iran's nuclear ambitions, but U.S. policy on Iraq and North Korea has left the Islamic state believing that only nuclear weapons can deter the possibility of U.S. invasion, experts said on Thursday.
Iran, which President Bush has branded part of an "axis of evil" along with North Korea and prewar Iraq, saw Baghdad fall to U.S.-led forces in April 2003, the same month that North Korea told the United States it possessed nuclear weapons.
Now, with 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and North Korean diplomatic talks promising attractive benefits for Pyongyang, Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations said the message to Iran was clear.
"You've got to become North Korea, or you will be Iraq," said Takeyh, the council's senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies.
"Biological and chemical weapons don't deter the U.S. military and are no guarantee of territorial integrity or sovereignty," he said. "But nuclear weapons have a bargaining utility."
