December 5, 2002
FOOL ME 42 TIMES:
Iraq Weapons Stash Could Be Large (John Hall, Dec 5, 2002, Media General News Service)The United States claims to be sitting on information about the location of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that will be checked off against the list Saddam Hussein turns over to inspectors before Sunday's deadline.How detailed and precise this dossier is, for obvious reasons, won't be disclosed in advance. But Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz describes it as "the tip of the iceberg," indicating only a fragment of Iraq's secret cache may be known to U.S. intelligence.
The range runs from weapons that could could cause tens of thousands of deaths to millions, Wolfowitz told an audience in London. He doesn't say what evidence there is to back up this kind of speculation, but the administration has been on full fright-patrol in the final days before Baghdad must disclose all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in its possession.
Both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney renewed warnings this week that if there is any delay, defiance or game-playing by Saddam Hussein, it will mean war.
Someone with a far more supple mind than I has to explain to me why the pundits keep getting fooled on the matter of Bush vs. the Taliban/Saddam/Osama. You'd think folks would be tired of writing that we're losing the war on terror or we've been backed into a corner only to have to shred their story the next day when we score a major victory, make another arrest or reveal information we've been sitting on. Over the few days since the inspectors went back in you've started to see these hand-wringing stories about how they aren't finding anything so Saddam's winning the PR offensive. Meanwhile, it's been widely reported that we're not sharing our info with the inspectors, but holding it in reserve until Saddam lists what he's willing to admit he has.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 5, 2002 9:47 PM
Wolfowitz is kind of wacky.
According to Woodward's book te frst thing he wanted to do in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was attack Iraq, not Afghanistan or Al Qaeda.
I think the reason is we are besotted by Internet time, and measure everything in nanoseconds.
The best decription you'll hear of Dubya is that he is a tortoise. (And wasn't Clinton a hare extraordinaire.)
And what is the standard intellectuals opinion of a tortoise? Slow, stolid, thinks like molassas, unimaginative, single-minded, incapable of the subtlety necessary to think in twelve directions at once, etc. etc.
And of course they love the hare. "Oh, how dazzling! Look how quickly he jumps from place to place! I can't take my eyes off him!!" Etc.
And we all know how the tale comes out, don't we? The only difference is that the spectators in the fable acknowledged that the tortoise won, understood why, and learned the lesson of simple determination and conviction over flash and dazzle. Think these brilliant academc types will ever learn that lesson and give credit to the man who taught it to them?
Don't hold your breath.
I guess wacky is like beauty.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at December 6, 2002 3:41 AMSometimes slow is not a virtue. I don't know why Bush didn't get started on smallpox vaccinations eight months ago.
Posted by: pj at December 6, 2002 8:07 AMMr. Choudhury, please read Ledeens book "War Against the Terror Masters" and you might not think it so wacky to attack Iraq first.
Posted by: BJW at December 6, 2002 8:53 AM