I don't think Musharraf wants a war either. But there are lot of fanatics in Pakistan that do, and on the Indian side there is a combination of those that want a war and those that are tired of fanatics from Pakistan coming over the border.

And then there is the problem of having large forces that are set for war facing each other over the border. One accident, real or staged, and things spiral out of control.

The fact that neither country has a large stockpile of nukes and there are questions about how reliable those nukes are actually makes the situation worse. It makes it to easy to take a gambler's view about the whole thing.

The one thing that does work in the favor of peace is that everybody outside India and Pakistan is applying pressure to back down. The risk of a nuclear exchange is to great to take any chance of a little conflict blowing out of proportion.

Jay

Saddam is a perfect example of the cold, calculating bastard dictator. His first goal is his own survival, then comes increasing his power. The good of Iraq is only important as it regards the second point above.

Notice that when he launched the scuds against Isreal he didn't use chemical warheads, even though he clearly could have. His goal was to provoke an Isreali response, but was carefully gauged to not give Isreal any excuse to use a nuclear weapon. A conventional force response by Isreal would likely have shattered the colition of Arab states that was aligned against Saddam. The complications this would bring would buy him time, if nothing else.

Most Americans think Saddam is a conquest hopefull, but Saddam isn't that foolish. Both the Iraq-Iran war and the invasion of Kuwait had more to do with his survival then desire for land. The first was triggered by Iran's attempt to export their revolution to Iraq, while the second was caused by financial needs. Iraq's economy had not recovered after the war because oil prices where down, in part because Kuwait was exporting more then OPEC rules allowed.

Jay