It seems like everything is lined up and ready for the defeat of Saddam Hussein and for a dramatic shake-up/realignment of the International World Order.
The UN Security Council is now utterly pointless and no nation will ever attempt to go through it again, the French have clearly staked out their future, and the Democrats have their position mapped out (the left wing bloggers have spent the last week engaging in their typical pop psychology analysis of Bush, crowing about dropping approval ratings, so it is going to be funny watching him make them look like idiots again).
Oh, and Turkey just flip-flopped. We have a northern front now. Bush the simplistic cowboy is about to make everyone look stupid again.
Andrew Lazarus
Hey, John, read the story to the end AND WRITE THIS WHEN THE TURKISH PARLIAMENT VOTES YES. Not when the pro-US leaders reiterate their support.
Or, I suppose, write when the Turkish generals dissolve or defy Parliament. (We had to destroy this democracy in order to save it.)
John Cole
Andrew- I think it is too late for our troops to be based there- all this is is a sign that Turkey wants a say in post-war Iraq.
Andrew Lazarus
Well, of course Turkey wants a say in post-war Iraq, in the Kurdish regions. Many people fear they want TOO MUCH SAY.
Unless the war is very quick, and I am not one of the believers in that, there would be plenty of time to open a second front. But not without the Turks’ permission.
John Cole
Andrew- The reason I pointed out that Turkey was flip-flopping (and they will), is because one of the endless strawmen erected by the naysayers was “we can’t do this without a northern front.” I rejected that in the first place, and now it doesn’t look like even that is a problem now…
The simple fact of the matter is that this was decided with the first resolution 6 months ago. That the anti-war left, the Democrat party, and the now thoroughly irrelevant UN Security Council never figured that out is amaaziung to me. What did congress think they were voting on? What were those words supposed to mean in 1441? It is just laughable- it meant disarm or we disarm you. Period.
Tom Daschle is such a weasel and a moron he STILL doesn’t get it. Failed diplomacy means going to war without the French and the entire Security Council (damn- can we win without Cameroon, Mexico, and Chile?). Successful diplomacy would mean a resolution that would end in war with the Security council support (or does Daschle really think we would sign on for another resolution with really serious unnamed consequences that would allow the French to give Hussein 6 more months cover?).
Not to mention, Daschle voted yes for the resolution last fall, and he is on the record stating that he would vote for it again.
How is the left going to spin a successful prosecution of this war, particularly when we find the WMD?
Andrew Lazarus
First successfully prosecute the war and find the WMD. Then we can talk. Or will the WMD of the Iraq War be like the OBL of the Afghan War? That is, once the objective is hard to obtain, we won’t hear of it again.
(If I REALLY thought that Saddam retained a significant WMD program, I’d be more in favor of the war. But if we have some evidence of this, we didn’t bother to give it to the UN. What we gave them is by all accounts an amateurish forgery and other–I quote–“garbage”.)
David Perron
Shortly after Desert Storm, a UN inspection team attempted to perform a surprise inspection on an Iraqi military base. Because the base commander foolishly (and apparently for him, fatally) allowed the inspectors to look into the base from the vantage point of a water tower outside the perimeter, they were able to witness several flatbed semis exiting from the rear of the base. This was caught on video. A portion of the team pursued and were able to video part of the cargo, which was positively identified as magnets whose unique purpose was purification of uranium, if I recall correctly. Given that they were fired upon by the occupants of the trucks, they were unable to follow these trucks to their destination. And of course, the cargo has never been recovered.
Additionally, an Iraqi nuclear scientist defected shortly thereafter and testified positively and publicly that Hussein had sufficient nuclear materials, but had yet to form those materials into a small enough payload.
But don’t take my word for it. Check out the timeline here.
Remember whose reactor was destroyed by Israel way back in 1981. Recall that that reactor was built largely by Hussein, within a couple of years after he took power in Iraq. Is it still as easy to convince yourself that Iraq is no longer in the business of attempting to produce WMD?
I imagine you could attack PBS as being hopelessly controlled by the conservative media giants. That would render me unable to respond due to helpless laughter, though.
David Perron
Crap. I guess links don’t work. So here’s the
pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/longroad/etc/cron.html