Two former U-S Ambassadors who now live and work in Iowa say war with Iraq seems inevitable.John Menzies, the president of Graceland University in Lamoni, was U-S Ambassador to Bosnia during U-S intervention in the Balkans. Menzies says he could envision a “goal-line tackle” in which the people of Iraq would overthrow Saddam Hussein. But he says it’s unlikely the Iraqi people could muster the force required to topple Hussein since he has such firm control of the levers of power and has even gassed his own citizens when tested. Menzies says the President and other U-S officials have properly shifted the discussion to the “liberation” of Iraq. Menzies says the people of Iraq will be the greatest beneficiaries of an intervention that would bring them a new form of government, and new liberties. Kenneth Quinn, president of the Des Moines-based World Food Prize Foundation, retired from a career in the foreign service — concluding with his job as U-S Ambassador to Cambodia. Quinn says war seems “likely” with thousands of U-S troops poised in the Persian Gulf. But Quinn says there’s an outside chance that internal changes in Iraq — like a change in its government — could avert war. Quinn says as the United Nations Security Council debates the proper response to Iraq’s intransigence, the politics among the nations represented are fierce. Quinn says there’s a lot of resentment toward the US as countries in Europe have felt they’ve suffered in our shadow and smaller countries are smarting over reduction in US aid.
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