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[Previous entry: "In which I contravene recommended journalistic practice"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "The ongoing Rachel Corrie incident"] 27 June 2003: "Ground Force cont'd"
Bill Herbert has some thoughts regarding the materials reported by Dr. Mehdi Obeidi.
[The Council] Decides that Iraq shall unconditionally agree not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material or any subsystems or components or any research, development, support or manufacturing facilities relating to the above;Now why would you hide these materials, rather than handing them over to the IAEA boys, unless you were planning to dig them up and use them again at some later date? That indicates that Iraq had an intention to resume development of nuclear weapons, which is something it had explicitly agreed not to do. Before the war, I was irritated that the Bush administration failed to present the case against the Iraqi government based on demonstrable facts, not in the least place the continued violation of resolutions 687 and following. I used the term "damaging and unnecessary ballast" to refer to the implications about the Iraqi government actively cooperating with al-Qaeda, and Iraq posing an imminent threat to American interests; and those claims have distracted from the legitimate case against Iraq. I've already read responses to the rose garden find along the lines of "well, if it was buried for twelve years, it can't have been a very imminent threat..." This totally and wilfully misses the point by purposely ignoring the violation of resolution 687 involved, but much of the blame for that is ultimately the Bush administration's, because it wrote rhetorical checks which have now bounced. I have to say, the administration—notably Bush, Fleischer and Rumsfeld—has displayed a rare talent, which is that they've proved themselves capable of screwing up what could, no, should have been an ironclad case. |
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