| November 23 |  |
Editor says, What if successive Democrat White Houses had failed to keep Saddam in his box? This story was published in the December 2008 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 2009, on this day American officials confirmed for the first time that the ruling Ba'ath Party had indeed detonated a nuclear device a week before, citing radioactive debris found in air samples collected in the Western desert of Iraq.
Out of the Box
The office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement: "Analysis of air samples collected on Nov. 19, 2009, detected radioactive debris which confirms that the Government of Iraq conducted an underground nuclear explosion in the vicinity of Akashat on Nov. 16, 2009". The day after the blast, the Pentagon dispatched Air Force planes with special radiation detectors into international air space near the Syrian border.
The great nation of Iraq joined India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea as the fifth sovereign state to posses their own nuclear weapons program outside the signatory list of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In a televised stand-up address from the Oval Office, forty-fourth US President Joseph I. Lieberman confirmed to the American people that Saddam Hussein was "now out of the strategic box and able to threaten Iraq's neighbors".
The fifteen year policy pursued by three successive Democratic Presidential administrations had been most effectively articulated by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Wingate University on March 25, 1997. In her keynote speech American Leadership for the 21st Century: Doing What's Right and Smart for America's Future, Albright stated "Today, as a result of American diplomatic and military leadership from Administrations of both parties, our citizens are safer than at any time in memory. Russian warheads no longer target our homes, and nuclear weapons have been removed from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakstan. North Korea's nuclear weapons program has been frozen and will be dismantled.Iraq's Saddam Hussein remains trapped in a strategic box, unable to threaten Iraq's neighbors--or us".
Multilateral efforts would continue through diplomatix channels, said Lieberman, as America leveraged the prestige of her global leadership to find a peaceful solution to the crisis with friends and allies. Substantive dialogue would be pursued with the governments of France and Russia, who many Americans blamed - quiet wrongly in the President's view - for breaking the international consensus on Iraq in the late 1990s.
Lieberman expressed confidence that the UN Security Council could develop a common strategy that encouraged Iraq to dismantle her nuclear weapons program, easing tension in the Middle East.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Tim Trevan, Saddam's Secretys - the Hunt fort Iraq's Hidden WeaponsStory Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beasts Source: Wikipedia Labels: Joe Lieberman, Saddam Hussein, Madeleine Albright, Democrats, Iraq. Editor says, Having read Tim Trevan's now dated book Saddam's Secrets - the Hunt fort Iraq's Hidden Weapons about UNSCOM from 1999, it is of course startling to read his conclusion that perhaps nothing can be done to eliminate Saddam. Of course now we look back with a slightly different perspective, yet Trevan's account of the cat-and-mouse game with the UN Inspectors is of course a key element in the drama. So we've chosen Joe Liebermann's less than belligerent personae to explore a neo-conservative dystopian vision of the future where Trevan's worst fears are realised. It does not reflect our views, it is simply another anti-war perspective.
According to Albright's own memoirs, she once argued with Colin Powell for the use of military force by asking, 
What's the point of you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can't use it? 
~ You know, even though America may continue with diplomatic efforts, somehow I don't think Isreal will ;)
~ This would put the cat among the pigeons for real. The israelis would be excreting bricks, and most of Iraq's neighbors would be as well. Particularly the Iranians.
~ Funny, Lieberman's always struck me as being a bit more confrontational than that....
Comment from Paul Schenck on Facebook: Interesting as always, but this one seems quite a stretch to me on two points: a) Lieberman becoming president and b) Sadam developing nuclear weapons in spite of world-wide pressure and U. N. inspections.
~ What is this story premised upon? No raid at Osirak? No Gulf War I?
~ And why is it that everyone seems to think America would have been more threatened by Saddam Hussein with nukes than it was by Joseph Stalin with them? For that matte, why take it for granted that Democrats alone would have let Saddam "out of his box"? It was the Reagan administration, after all, which, eyes wide open (one presumes), supplied him with the makings for the chemical weapons he would later use both against the Iranians and against his own people.
~ A weak stance on nuclear proliferation would just allow it to spread. Iran would have to have the bomb, then so would Libya, Egypt...
~ The question is whether the whole self-peservation bit would make MAD a stabilizing force, or is someone is crazy enough to not care if they die so long as they take thier enemies with them. Propaganda to the contrary my bet is on the former.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
