Israeli diplomat compares Saddam threat to al-Qaida

Shmuel ben-Shmuel is the Israeli consul in the Southeast, based in Atlanta. (Not Florida? Oh, there's one in Miami too. Florida isn't really the South, anyway.) Speaking in Birmingham yesterday, he engaged in a somewhat weak comparison. I believe Saddam is a threat; I believe he needs to be removed. I don't think he is the same kind of threat as al-Qaeda. Saddam in a sense is far more powerful, in that he has a whole nation -- potentially a very wealthy one -- behind him. But he's constrained to pretty much the reach his military gives him. If he got nuclear weapons, that would be a different matter, but he'd still probably be only a regional threat, and Iraq is on the other side of the world. That's not to say he can't do us damage, only that it would be a completely different type of damage than what al-Qaeda did.