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| Flag of Inconvenience | |
As the echos of gunfire quieten down in Iraq (apart from the odd angry shot
from Saddamites who decided not to fight to the death in the first round) the
world looks on and innocently asks the question 'so, George, um .. where
are the WMDs?' Some six weeks after George (all-the-way) Bush declared the main fighting
over, the 2000 weapons experts scouring Iraq have been unable to find a smoking
gun which would have justified the war on the basis of disarming Iraq of WMDs.
The closest they have come to is a few suspiciously clean portable
laboratories, and the CNN viewers expected better. Apologists like Condi Rice have been mumbling about 'Just in time
assembly', suggesting that a strife and sanction-ridden Iraqi economy
could operate with the efficiency of modern Japan with its just-in-time
manufacturing of electronic equipment and cars, and spontaneously produce WMDs
on demand. Her qualifications are Political Science - not economics. US analysts are suggesting that data was 'reshaped' before being passed
to the higher levels of government. Apparently they don't call it lying when
the president is involved. And US officials are even suggesting that WMDs may never be found, and are
doing damage control, trying to tread the fine bureaucratic line between
'not my fault' and 'we all share collective guilt'. Of course, for every peace-monger pointedly tapping his foot and pouting
'so where are the WMDs?' there are two war-niks smugly answering the
question with a question 'who cares?' The predictions of millions of Iraqi civilian deaths, of mass starvation,
haven't come true, the sky hasn't fallen and the Saddamite regime has. As the mass graves are exhumed, the bodies of the murdered critics of the
regime are returned to their families and the true story of the horror of the
Saddamite era is told, there are few who would argue the war was unjustified on
compassionate grounds. Limbless children blown up by stray precision weapons
make good fodder for emotive hysteria, but so do hundreds of murdered bodies
exhumed from Saddam's killing fields. Saddam's information minister was fun while he lasted - in the end it must
have been a challenge to see how long he could continue to proclaim the
ridiculous with a straight face. Proclaiming the Americans were being
slaughtered as tanks were seen behind him must have been a hoot. Unfortunately,
the Americans (not known for their sophisticated sense of humor) may not have
shared the joke, so he had to give up his performance career and vanish, as the
Saddamite deck-of-cards fell. In the West, though, some people seem intent on flogging dead horses. Four
wheel drives proudly sporting No War stickers are still invading the
streets of our leftist cities. Guys, guys, you got your wish: the war is over -
but you lost.
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