Who’s ripe for invasion next? Iraq was hampered by the sanctions and their effect on it’s readiness, so the next candidate might put up more of a fight.
Despite the acknowledgment that the uranium claim was dubious, Rice said the rest of the president’s case for going to war was solid. It was based on assessments by intelligence agencies that Iraq was actively procuring nuclear scientists and designs for a weapon, and might be able to have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade, she said.
By this standard, the list of targets is pretty long: in our own hemisphere, I can see Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil all being able to design and build a bomb by 2010. Venezuela has oil, too. And when you see how tantalizingly close the Ariane spaceport (“Any mass, any orbit, anytime”) is, gosh, they are much more a threat than Iraq was.
Of course, there’s North Korea, but we can’t do anything there without China’s approval: wouldn’t be prudent.
Where else is a threat, based on those terms? We missed our chance to nip India and Pakistan in the bud and they don’t have oil anyway. Anywhere near the Spratly Islands we could take a look at? Oil and gas potential, says the Factbook, undoubtedly why these uninhabited rocks are claimed by six countries.
In the meantime, the NYTimes has a lengthy review of the flawed intelligence and lack of rudimentary fact-checking that brought us to this pass.