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| Show us your anthrax, Saddam | |
The UN raised
'concern' over the Iraqi
weapons declaration, given to the UN on the 8th of this month, and the US went further and labeled it as
a 'material breach' of the UN guidelines. Now George Dubya Bush and Tony Blair
have canceled trips in January to spend time on 'foreign policy'. The drums of
war appear to be beating to a
January crescendo. On the other hand, Johnny (don't-leave-me-behind) Howard has hinted at a
troop deployment in March. Johnny, Johnny, it may be all over by then, and in
order to get brownie points from the US you have to turn up before the fighting
stops .. it's one of those little war etiquette things. Dubya's position is a little counter-intuitive here. He pushed the UN very hard
to get it to force Saddam to produce the weapons declaration document.
Now he labels it a sham, but he has produced no hard evidence to prove that it
is. He is just running around saying 'what about the Anthrax?' Well, Dubya,
the answer at this stage is 'what anthrax?' If you weren't prepared to trust
the competence of the UN, you shouldn't have pushed so hard to send them in. UN Weapons inspectors are saying that Iraq has 'failed in its duty to
convince the UN that it has disarmed'. Some may think that this is setting the
bar a bit high - surely the onus is on the anti-Iraq coalition to prove that
Iraq has failed to disarm, particularly as the much heralded UN inspectors now
have free access to even the most intimate and private parts of Iraq. Finding
the WMDs
may be too hard for the UN (who couldn't organize a salmonella outbreak in a
Chinese kitchen), but having made the demand it seems a little hypocritical to
assume guilt without the inspectors finding something more incriminating than
moldy salami in the presidential fridge. Dubya is sounding a bit like a lefty demonstrator, who
shouts 'they are evil' often enough to
believe his own rhetoric, but part of the gamble is that the WMDs will be
found after the war. Contrite Iraqis will come teeming out of the woodwork like
poisoned termites confessing and claiming 'he made me do it'. These
will be followed by the hypocritical nations of Europe jumping on the
band-wagon and saying 'We always said taking out Saddam was a good
idea'. Success has many allies. But the shoot-now-justify-later approach is still a gamble for Dubya.
Either there is a conspiracy afoot, and our great leaders know something which
us mere democratic voters
are not allowed to, or Dubya's IQ has fallen with the winter temperatures in
the Iraqi desert. It's hard to know which is scarier. At least we can still rely on the two invariants of the civilized world:
Iraqi Deaths and the taxes to pay for them.
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