Friday, 27 June, 2003Ground Force cont'dBill Herbert has some thoughts regarding the materials reported by Dr. Mehdi Obeidi. posted 1720 Z-8 [more..] Thursday, 26 June, 2003In which I contravene recommended journalistic practiceFrom The Economist Style Guide (7th edition): Do not be too pleased with yourself. Don't boast of your own cleverness by telling readers that you correctly predicted something or that you have a scoop. You are more likely to bore or irritate them than to impress them.With that in mind, the concluding paragraph from my "Allied Force"/"Iraqi Freedom" entry of 24-Jun-2003: If it emerges that the [Bush] administration did lie, this would be a serious matter. But it would still be a separate—albeit related—issue from the question of whether "Iraqi Freedom" was justified.And for the sake of comparison, the opening paragraph of the latest column from Spinsanity, "What's at stake in the WMD debate" by Ben Fritz, of 24-Jun-2003: A very important debate, perhaps one of the most important in years, is brewing over two separate but related questions: Did President Bush lie to convince our nation to go to war? And was the war in Iraq justified given that the US has not found the weapons of mass destruction it allegedly possessed?Emphasis in bold mine. It's an obvious formulation, of course, but I do feel slightly pleased at having thrown it out one day earlier than Spinsanity. The Spinsanity piece does a far better job of dissecting the debate and the errors being committed on both sides than I have, so check it out. posted 1820 Z-8 [link] This is a job for Ground Force! Today's Olympian reports an Iraqi scientist, Mehadi Obeidi, has turned over a bunch of documents and components pertaining to nuclear weapons development, which he'd had hidden in his rose garden since 1991. The material indicates that the Iraqi nuclear programme was indeed shut down in the 1990s, but evidently Iraq intended to reconstitute it in the event sanctions and inspections were terminated. The material in Mr. Obeidi's garden would have saved a lot of time and effort in doing so. posted 1631 Z-8 [link] Tuesday, 24 June, 2003Encounter in the darkTen minutes ago, I stepped out onto our rear deck for a smoke. Right next to our deck is a cherry tree. There was lot of rustling in the tree, so I took out the mini-Maglite which I usually carry and shone it up the tree, to discover a raccoon some ten or fifteen feet off the ground, selecting cherries and dropping them to the ground, presumably to eat them after climbing down again. Cheeky sod. Still, the cherries aren't particularly pleasing to the human palate, so she (I had ample opportunity to determine her sex, being underneath) is quite welcome to them. You just don't get this in The Hague. posted 0159 Z-8 [link] Hanoi on the Tigris As far as the WMD issue is concerned, I think I've said just about all I have to say. It took me three days to write that last post, and frankly, I'm tired of trying to identify all the different fallacies employed in the "debate" and so I intend to deploy a new tactic. The next time I hear someone whinge that "we were promised tens of thousands of litres of VX" or whatever, I'll just respond, "Well, I was promised that Iraq would become Vietnam. But there's no Mekong or Red River Delta, there's no Annamese Cordillera, there's certainly no rain forest! The population of Iraq still consists overwhelmingly of Arabs, Kurds, Turcomans, Assyrians and 'other' instead of Vietnamese, Chinese, Hmong, Khmer, Thai, Cham and Montagnards! It's been three months and there's not a bowl of pho bo or a bottle of nuoc mam to be had in the country!" It makes as much sense as anything else being said. posted 0102 Z-8 [link] Monday, 23 June, 2003A comparison of two interventionsLately, I've been reacquainting myself with the circumstances surrounding Operation "Allied Force"—NATO's 1999 war with Serbia over Kosovo—and it strikes me the number of parallels with Operation "Iraqi Freedom" merit invoking Yogi Berra's line that it's "déja vu all over again." Or so it seems. posted 1738 Z-8 [more..] |
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