Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
"The game is over," President George W. Bush said today in an attempt to let everyone know that he is the Dirty Harry of the world. "Saddam Hussein will be stopped."
It appears almost certain that the United States will soon be escalating its current war with Iraq. What's interesting is that no argument presented by the Bush Administration for furthering the war stands up to scrutiny.
We are told war is necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction and/or giving them to terrorists such al Qaeda. But no evidence has been presented that Saddam intends to use such weapons and he certainly hasn't shown much interest in using them over the last 12 years. And the U.S. has been talking about invading Iraq for over a year now. During that time, Saddam could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorists but the Bush Administration doesn't profess any concern about this possibility. It appears Bush doesn't take this risk seriously.
We are told war with Iraq is the only way the United Nations will remain strong. But by withholding intelligence the U.S. is violating clause 10 of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 that Bush says Iraq must fully comply with. Furthermore the Bush Administration had no previous lover for international institutions such as the U.S. and most likely it will Bush and friends happy if they can soon say the U.N. is irrelevant.
And we are told this war is about human rights. But it is impossible to think that this is much of a concern give the administration's interest in economically controlling Iraq.
In short, if the Bush Administration is to be believed -a big if since, as Jim Henley and Chalmers Johnson have pointed out, presidents have a tendency to lie when it comes to justifying wars-, there is no reason to escalate the war with Iraq.
But this war is not without purpose. It is about power. It is about control. It is about showing the world that the U.S. can and will do whatever it wants whenever it wants.
I wonder, why isn't Bush honest about this? posted by micah holmquist at 2/06/2003 10:44:00 PM
