Actually, I'll go you one better, Orrin: Eleven 122 mm shells, please. Hardly much to worry about. Certainly no threat to the U.S., and definitely not worth collecting our own Gaza-Strip-on-the-Euphrates.

Dang, this is a hard one. I don't think Robert Fisk publishes tomorrow. Paul Wellstone, God bless him, is dead. Jim McDermott and Patty Murray are too easy.



Fine. Chomsky. Do or die.

Dimitri Perricos, the leader of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) team in Baghdad, said the find is "not a smoking gun" that might indicate Iraq had violated U.N. resolutions.




">http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/01/16/sproject.irq.wrap/index.html




Wow, it was the very guy who found the shells! Not just an inspector, also a PR guy, "Dmitri Perricos" is UN-Greek for "Sammy Davis, Jr".

While the artillery rockets are evidence of an Iraqi weapons program, they may not amount to a 'smoking gun' unless some sort of chemical agent is also detected, said U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.




">http://www.msnbc.com/news/842500.asp

Oddly, the UN resolution and 1992 treaty don't suggest that "only weapons that threaten the US" count as violations.

I nominate Iraqi Gen. Amin
:



But Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer to the inspection teams, said they were short-range shells imported in 1988 and mentioned in Iraq's December declaration.

He expressed "astonishment" over "the fuss made about the discovery by a U.N. inspection team of 'mass destruction weapons.' It is no more than a storm in a teacup," Amin told a news conference hastily called after the U.N. announcement.

Amin said the inspection team found the munitions in a sealed box that had never been opened and was covered by dust and bird droppings.

"When these boxes were opened, they found 122-mm rockets with empty warheads. No chemical or biological warheads. Just empty rockets which are expired and imported in 1988," Amin said, adding similar rockets were found by U.N. inspectors in 1997.

Sigi, I don't care about the UN, or even that damned treaty from that damned fool war of a decade ago. What I care about is the costs of invading and occupying a country, many of which are unintended. Six puny shells in the back of some warehouse just doesn't cut it.

'They're Not Warheads, They're Peaceheads'

Derek:



I guess I find it odd that you get so exercised about a Mexican migrant who illegally comes here seeking work but are so unfazed by an enemy violating the terms of a peace treaty.

Well, I'm with Derek (see above). As a retired US Army colonel, I'm offering my fixed opinion that America has no business attacking countries that haven't attacked us first - or aren't certainly about to do so. It's contrary to Just War theory, it sets a deplorable precedent, and it puts us in practically the same moral box as the bad guys. No thanks!

Hey, it's the Pearl Harbor theory of Just War-- every agressor get's one free hit against the U.S. We can't act, even though we have the ability and knowledge, until several thousand Americans are dead. Maybe we can set aside a part of the US labeled "Attack Here" and let people like Mr. Peery and Copold volunteer their services to live and work there, so as to spare the rest of us. Brings new meaning to "human shield."

George - You think Saddam hasn't attacked us yet? Iraqi agents have been linked to the 1993 WTC bombing and the 1995 Okla City bombing as well as numerous foreign attacks . . . and Iraq probably was involved in 9/11.

Mr. Peery:



What about the peace treaty? Or did you oppose the Gulf War too? Why isn't Saddam bound by his agreement?

Raoul: A better argument in response to COL Peery would be to note that a very restrictive interpretation of the Just War doctrine will lead to not only military impotence but also moral impotence. A good reference to a less contricted view on this subject is George Weigel's "Moral Clarity in a Time of War":

">http://www.eppc.org/publications/xq/ASP/pubsID.1272/qx/pubs_viewdetail.htm




An exerpt:

"This peace of tranquillitas ordinis, this peace of order, is composed of justice and freedom. The peace of order is not the eerily quiet and sullen “peace” of a well-run authoritarian regime; it is a peace built on foundations of constitutional, commutative, and social justice. It is a peace in which freedom, especially religious freedom, flourishes. The defense of basic human rights is thus an integral component of “work for peace.” "



COL Peery probably doesn't wish to be framed as an isolationist who could care less about what happens in hell holes like Iraq, but he also needs to clarify what measures he would support against both:

a. direct attacks on US pilots supporting the provisions of the 1991 armistice with Iraq, and

b. manifest human rights violations by the Baathist regime.



His stated equation of no aggression = no US response not only is irrelevent given recent events, but also makes such events as the US entry into WW I rather dubious. The Lusitania, after all, was a British ship sailing near the British coast and carrying war munitions.

It was the Zimmerman telegraph which got the US into WW1 although the American dead aboard the Lusitiana probably helped that decision.

MAC: I have no doubt that the events in Mexico and the Zimmerman Telegraph had great bearing on how Wilson was able to deflect US policy towards intervention, and confirmed the prior policy of US economic aid to the Allies. The casas belli was however, unrestricted submarine warfare as described in the US archives:

">http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/zimmermann_telegram/zimmermann_telegram.html




(for the Sussex Pledge see:

">http://members.aol.com/TeacherNet/WWI.html#Sussex


)

OJ: The problem with the Mexican migrant is that he's coming into my town. Yeah, it sounds great that he wants to work, but the problem is that his kids require bilingual ed, his wife needs publicly supported health care, and his brother's running a credit card scam with his gangbanger buddies. In addition, my town is turned into Tijuana north as I'm confronted with Spanish-language signs, Tejano music blasting out of cars and employees at the local Target who can't speak English. What's the point of fighting for the country in the Middle East if you're giving it away to folks next door?

Defensive wars are, by definition, just, no?



The question of how the US got into World War I, while not especially relevant here, is interesting. The answer

is neither the Zimmerman Telegram nor unrestricted submarine warfare, but a conspiracy on the part of Wilson and, weirdly enough, Walter Lippmann. Ronald

Steele's biography of Lippmann laid out the documents

two decades ago, although as far as I know, no reviewer

except me noticed.

Something I haven't seen written about is what I call the "obverse scenario." Say we attack Iraql, defeat their military, and achieve (one way or another) "regime change." Perfect, right? Not so fast -- we've still no guarantee some Islamist group won't use WMD in the populated areas of Europe or America. This hydra has many heads; Saddam is only one of them.

Then got for the roots.

Mr. Peery - Yes - exactly right - the trouble is that not going to war doesn't reduce the risk, it delays it but also increases the magnitude of the potential disaster. After 9/11 and our response to it, you've got to think that the next attack would be intended to cripple us -- e.g. a hundred strategically located nuclear weapons. We need to clean out the sewer of the Middle East before that happens.

Derek: Sounds like life as usual in New Mexico for the last 2003 less 1848 = 155 years. Nobody died of bilingualism yet. Throw in the Indians (who don't really like the Hispanics that much either) and you get a quaint case of rustic incivility at worse.

COL Peery: All you have stated is that actions (going to war in this case) have consequences (what happens when the shooting stops). Your question merely is answered by the admittedly subjective assertion that the threat of Iraqi revaunchism appears internationally more dangerous than the threat of Iraqi NMD use and proliferation at this current time. This position appears to be held by the US President and a majority of Congress, who funds his executive positions. So the initiative to resolve the Baathist challenge to order goes forward.



On the other hand, the US is now playing in the Major Leagues, something that Woodrow Wilson and the Congress elected in 1918 never quite grasped. Truman and the Congresses from 1944-50 seemed to do quite a bit better job of recognizing that whatever policies they adopt and fund, the US had better deal with cleaning up the messes afterwards, which essentially is what started the Cold War. But how can this forum predicted fully whither Iraq, let alone the whole Mideast, when Truman and the US government of 1948 certainly had an equally unclear view of what the next decade would bring?

In 1935, Britain declined to go to war against

Italy because, as Neville Chamberlain (chancellor

of the Exchequer) said, the country could not

possibly afford a military program that would

have cost about 2 pounds per Briton per year.



Did the war of 1939-45 (even just the part

against Italy) cost more than 10 pounds per

Briton?



We cannot afford not to go to war, and we

cannot afford anything less than complete and

abject surrender of the enemies of civilization.



It would have been cheaper to have started

shooting a year ago.

Harry, in many ways it would have been better to start shooting a year ago. Unfortunately in democracies you have to build up popular support, and if popular support depends on international support you have to build that up too; and if you have a military of limited resources you may have to take time to build that up too. I'm not going to Monday-morning quarterback Bush's decision to delay.

If you're waiting for international support, you

might as well throw in with the Stalinists

who marched in Washington today. You'll

never get war.



I don't like war, but when the alternatives are

worse, war is the only sane choice.



I have laid out my plan for bringing the

Muslim world to heel without harming any

people; but, as you say, public opinion would

have to follow on, and it never would have.



So when people wring their hands over

violence and bloodshed, I am not impressed.