Gutterboy

If you really want war, you don't need 'evidence'
New Hampshire Sunday News ^ | 1/19/03 | JACK KENNY

Thank God for Donald Rumsfeld, America's Secretary of Defense. Without old "Rummy," we might never fully understand why we are about to go to war with Iraq.

You may recall that last fall, when the administration was seeking authorization from Congress for military action against Iraq, the big issue was Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." Under the Bush doctrine, evil regimes like the one in Baghdad are not allowed to have such weapons. The mere possession of them, or even the effort to obtain them, gives the United States the right to launch a pre-emptive strike and impose "regime change" on the offending nation.

And there was the frequently repeated but false charge that Iraq had "kicked out" United Nations weapons inspectors in 1998. In fact, the United Nations had withdrawn its weapons inspectors for their own safety just before U.S. and British planes began bombing Iraq on what was, perhaps by coincidence, the eve of the U.S. House vote on Bill Clinton's impeachment.

The resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council late last year demanded the readmission of weapons inspectors and the full cooperation of the Iraqi government in the inspections.

Well, the U.N. inspectors have been back in the country for some time now and you might have thought that the absence thus far of evidence of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction would be cautiously regarded as good news by an administration that had declared that such weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein posed a "grave and gathering" danger to the peace and security of the United States and to Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East.

But as Rumsfeld and President Bush himself have made clear, the inability of the inspectors thus far to find a "smoking gun" in Iraq is further proof of perfidious deception of the Baghdad regime.

"So far, I haven't seen any evidence that he is disarming," Bush said of Saddam Hussein. So far, the weapons inspectors haven't found evidence that Hussein has the kind of weapons he would have to get rid of in order to be "disarming." No matter.

The way Rumsfeld explained it, it is the very absence of such evidence that proves Iraqi guilt.

"The fact that the inspectors have not yet come up with new evidence of Iraq's WMD program could be evidence, in and of itself, of Iraq's noncooperation," Rumsfeld explained. "We do know that Iraq has designed its programs in a way that they can proceed in an environment of inspections and that they are skilled at denial and deception."

Well, now, there you have it, proof of Iraq's guilt either way. As loathsome and despicable as the Baghdad regime is, you have to admit the Bush administration has set up this game in a way that Iraq can't win no matter what the weapons inspectors find or do not find.

If they find weapons of mass destruction, it is proof, of course, of the regime's aggressive designs. If no evidence is found, it is evidence of Iraq's "denial and deception" and its "non-cooperation" with the inspectors. It's a perfect "Catch 22."

So why bother with inspections in the first place? Why not just go to war now? To appease our allies and the United Nations, no doubt.

And perhaps our government felt the need to make some show of wanting to avoid a conflict. The inspections ritual, in that case, serves as a fig leaf to cover our intention to invade and conquer Iraq, no matter what Baghdad does or what the inspectors find. If you're determined enough to have a war, you can always find an excuse.

The Bush administration's attitude toward evidence ? or the lack of same ? of nuclear arms in Iraq is of a piece with its insistence on the right to imprison U.S. citizens ? labeled "enemy combatants" ? indefinitely, without the need for charges, much less evidence of guilt.

Evidence? What evidence? "We don't need no stinkin' evidence!"

It reminds me of a story I read long ago about the late Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was governor of California in 1942, when Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were rounded up and herded into internment camps following the outbreak of war with Japan. According to the story, someone told Warren that there was no evidence of disloyalty on the part of those being arrested.

"No evidence?" Warren supposedly replied. "What further proof do we need of how sneaky and treacherous they can be!"

I had always assumed the story was apocryphal or, if true, that Warren was being facetious. Perhaps he was. But Warren, in that story, sounds a lot like Bush and Rumsfeld.

As a famous comedian once observed, "Satire doesn't stand a chance against reality anymore."

unconnected

A good reply would be for someone to post that Holy Grail witch burning scene that I saw in another thread..

Interlude

That wasn't much of a rant. Who cares why we are or aren't doing inspections? Does anyone really think Saddam is a good guy? All rhetoric aside, the whole issue comes down to whether the US should be in the business of overthrowing oppressive regimes.

MonkeyMan