Harry, while the usual anecdotes in re Saddam's guessing incorrectly on two Bush's intentions are popular, what I had in mind with that sound byte is based on some of the output of the interview / interrogation with Saddam after he was captured and before he was hanged.
One of the points raised was why he'd been playing the whole shell game with the UN / Sanctions / Cease Fire Agreement / Inspections of 1991 and beyond. Among other things it had to do with his bluff/deterrent posture towards Iran, and providing them with 'uncertainty' in his posing / posturing vis a vis his major regional rival.
Granted, that's not a nuclear deterrent in the classic sense of when someone knows for darned sure that you have nukes, but he had used chemical weapons on them before ... so perhaps that is a lesser included case of "deterrent" if he could convince them of possession of that level of nastiness.
I may be a lone ranger in the following, but I cannot stand the use of the imprecise term "weapons of mass destruction" and never have liked it, preferring the older term 'NBC' which addressed the Nuke/Bio/Chem weapons. While all are nasty, each is nasty in a particular way and I don't like the semantic games people played with the general term.
A "WMD" deterrent isn't as clear a deterrent posture as a nuclear deterrent.
I might gas you.
I might nuke you.
Two significantly different threats/challenges to address, two very different risks to manage.
Apply this point to the actual topic of the thread, which is a submarine based deterrent force.
It really doesn't do the trick if it's gas.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 25th Feb 2015 at 17:14.