TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

The People Who Invented Chess

ADVERTISEMENT

Randy Ludacer

Published: February 17, 2008

In reviewing our concern about WMDs, particularly nukes in the hands first of Saddam and now Iran, the thing that is principally overlooked is the bellicose posture between these two countries for the last decade.

Under Saddam, Iraq decided to go to war against Iran, largely with U.S. help and encouragement. Although the Israelis had taken out Iraq's nuclear capabilities with a surgical air strike in 1981, both Iran and Iraq felt the need to menace each other with the potential threat of nuclear weaponry. Iran, with a population of nearly four times that of Iraq, proved more resilient than expected and threw waves of religious fanatics against the Iraqi army, creating a bloody stalemate in their ill-conceived war. Don Rumsfeld, was a special envoy to Iraq in those days, clearly being our lead fisherman who fished in troubled waters on our behalf.

When, in 2002, Saddam still kept up the pretense of having nuclear capabilities, it was to hold Iran in check. The people who invented chess were sensitive to this possibility and it served a weakened Iraq's purpose to play tiger with its large neighbor. Saddam never expected the U.S. to invade as it did, assuming instead that we would launch massive air strikes against Iraq, a damage he was willing to accept as the price for continuing his atomic bluff against Iran.

With the bifurcated power structure in Iran with the return of the Ayatolla, this seemed like a workable tactic until bin Laden and 9/11 upset the balance.

He was willing to play hound and hare with IAEA and their inspectors till the cows came home as long as it kept Iran off balance, but he failed to anticipate Bush, Cheney, Wolfawitz and Rumsfeld's enthusiasm for adventure and their penchant for miscalculation.

Randy Ludacer
Lake Placid

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT