Christopher Silvester

Diary – 21 September 2002

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Behind the rhetoric of those arguing that Saddam Hussein should not be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb lies the misconstruction that he is crazy enough to use such a weapon. Saddam may wish to develop a nuclear bomb as his way of strutting his stuff – after all, India and Pakistan did much the same – but his conventional military capability remains hobbled. His Ba’athist regime has not been an exporter of terrorism, unlike the mullahs of Iran, and it has displayed less sympathy than Saudi Arabia for the Wahabist ideology that underlies al-Qa’eda. Saddam is certainly a monster, but he is surely not seeking some G

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