This nation's current administration is busily engaged trying to convince the world that now, after twelve years of basically ignoring him, we need to destroy Saddam Hussein, or at least his power in Iraq. The case is hard to make.
First of all the administration, despite all its efforts, has yet to produce evidence that Saddam has any weapons capable of endangering anyone more than a thousand miles away from Baghdad. There's always the suggestion that the government has information that it cannot release without compromising intellgence efforts (I use the word intelligence in the limited spy sense, as you'll soon see).
But there are times when continued spying doesn't make much sense, and the information can probably be revealed without exposing the methods used to collect it. If there were a time for such a sacrifice, now would seem to be it. The administration is pulling out all the stops trying to convince the security council to approve what it intends to do anyway, a war to drive Saddam out of power. But the more the administration pushes, the more the countries on the security council resist, the more Tony Blair's political future deteriorates, the more the American people question the wisdom of George's obsession, and the more time Mr. Hussein has to booby trap his country, emplace human shields, and otherwise ensure that the battle will be bloodier.
Bush and his allies must feel like the man in a dream trying to run from the snakes. The faster he tries to run, the harder he pulls at his feet, the more they seem to get tangled up and the slower he makes progress away from that which he most fears.
The fact that this administration hasn't revealed any such intelligence mother lode suggests strongly to me that it doesn't have one. As long as the administration's spokespeople hint that there are things we don't know it can reveal everything it knows along with a few things it only thinks it knows, and hope that we believe the truly damning evidence actually exists.
In order to tap the political capital gained in the aftermath of the attacks on New York and D. C., George has tried to tell us this is part of the war on terrorism. I'll buy that. But if that's the case, the United States military ranks higher on the list of terrorist organizations than Iraq, Iran, or North Korea. What's he going to do about that? I doubt anyone will disagree with me when I say that George intends to enhance that organization's ability to inflict terror on the entire world.
But the U. S. military is NOT a terrorist organization, someone argues. It is the security organization of a sovereign state dedicated to liberty and the safety of the country's citizens.
So is the Iraqi army, and Saddam's attempts to arm it are nothing more than an attempt to provide security for his people in the least secure part of the world.
But Saddam uses his weapons against his own people.
Actually, Saddam uses his weapons against dissident people groups whom he views as aliens. They are not HIS people any more than the illegal immigrants we're beefing up border security to keep out are George's people.
Saddam is a crazed, unelected dictator with a desire to expand his power.
.... Don't tempt me!
A while back a tape surfaced that appeared to have been recorded by Osama bin Laden. In it he voiced opposition to a U. S. war against Iraq. The administration loudly trumpeted this as evidence that Osama and Saddam are cooperating. They kept hoping we didn't hear the part where Osama criticized Saddam harshly. A good analogy of the relationship between the two would be the alliance between the U. S. and Russia in World War Two. We were joined only by a common enemy.
This whole situation has served to demonstrate the lunacy of our two-party system. Both parties have lost all indications of intelligent, thoughtful consideration of the issues at hand. The Republicans are behind their president without question (well almost -- there are a few Republicans with backbone and morals, but they are too few to make a meaningful difference).
The Democrats are getting more laughable by the day. They want to present themselves as a clear alternative to Republicans, and George in particular. But they're frightened that a majority of Americans still support going to war against Iraq. They don't want to be seen as opposing the young people who are about to fight and die "protecting" U. S. citizens. So they won't come out against the war.
Richard Reeves published an insightful article this week. He pointed out that Americans who think this war is a dumb idea are being put in the same awkward position as Germans in the late 1930s. We don't believe it's right to attack another country, so we don't want our soldiers to win, but we are Americans and we don't want our soldiers (brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, sons, daughters, spouses, etc.) to lose.
Actually, Democrats are trying to position themselves to profit whatever the outcome in Iraq. They aren't questioning the war itself in case it goes well. But they are questioning the administration's methods in case it doesn't. Then they can say, "I told you so...."
Those Democrats who will oppose Mr. Bush (such as Bill Clinton, who no longer has political aspirations and is free to speak his mind and conscience) have argued "what has Iraq done to us?" Good question, I'd think. They could hardly mount a marginally effective defense when we came to drive them out of Kuwait.
As if existing evidence of the veritable drought of intelligence within the administration weren't enough, one of them had the audacity to ask, "What had the terrorists done to us before September 11?" That was in support of the questionable "get them before they get us" logic that has engendered so much misery in this world. But the more laughable part of it was its sheer inaccuracy. Before September 11 there was the bombing of the World Trade Center, the bombing of two embassies in Africa, and the suicide boat attack on a U. S. destroyer docked in the Persian Gulf.
And lest you think that I'm a Democrat apologist, let me criticize the previous administration. Clinton's response to these attacks was nothing more than "tit for tat" retaliation of the sort that guarantees that the Israeli - Palestinian conflict will never end. On the other hand, however, George did NOTHING after he got into office until the terrorists struck on our soil.
At the best that's just dereliction of duty. But I'm one of those who believe something more crafty and sinister was at work. George's "election" was hardly a resounding mandate. George is an idealist with specific political goals that caused him to seek the nation's most powerful office. The result of the 2000 election made it virtually impossible for him to enact any of his ambitious agenda.
I personally believe that, in search of a little political capital, George had decided to let the terrorists slip another attack by us. Why didn't the FBI and other agencies act on information from the ranks that something was up? Probably because they were willing to assist George out of a belief that his agenda would be good for the country.
In their defense, however, I don't think they had any clue how terrible and shocking the next attack would be. They were as shocked as the rest of us when they saw the footage of a major airliner being deliberately steered into a large skyscraper. But George was quick to secure the situation and look like a real leader. Even the usually cautious Dan Rather said, after George's speech to the nation naming bin Laden's organization as the culprits and promising a response, "Tonight we saw a man become a president." Bush's approval rating skyrocketed.
In the subsequent 2002 election the Republicans got a majority in both houses to enhance their control of the executive branch. Now the "Contract on America" that Bill Clinton batted out of the park in '95 has some chance of becoming official government policy. Part of that agenda is to finish the Persian Gulf war, and Bush is trying to use his post-9-11 political capital to sell it to the nation.
There is one other world fact that demonstrates the sheer, head-banging idiocy of the administration's drive to war. It's called North Korea. Unlike Iraq, North Korea has a missile capable of reaching United States soil. It also has at least one nuclear weapon to put on that missle, and credible evidence suggests they could have quite a number more in a few months.
But the current administration acts as if North Korea is a distraction from the important task of disarming Iraq. This despite the fact that George included th