Those seeking a 'smoking gun' had better hope they don't get it

Press Herald ^ | 2/3/03 | M.D. Harmon (Maine)

[GailA]

COLUMN: M.D. Harmon

Those seeking a 'smoking gun' had better hope they don't get it

Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

The United States and a constantly increasing number of allies are coming closer and closer to holding a despicable tyrant responsible for his past actions and rendering him unable to continue them both at home and abroad.

So, some people are upset. An entire dovecote of "anti-war activists" (at least for this war, and for this president - they were far less dovish when Bill Clinton attacked Serbia) is chirping its alarm over the fact that we have a president who understands that his principal task is the protection of our lives and interests.

Their exaggerations are so many, and their contact with reality so flimsy, that's it's hard to know where to start to hold them to account. Let's start with the big rally that was held in Washington last month.

I have a friend who lives in northern Virginia, a retired State Department officer who loves his country and who protested the Vietnam War in the '60s. Seized with serious doubts about the president's plans for Iraq, he crossed the Potomac to see if the rally would support his qualms.

He hasn't changed his mind about Iraq, but he was aghast at the march. Here's what he e-mailed me:

"I went to the March for Peace for three reasons: to register my anti-war views, and to voice my views on administration policy, and to show my niece and nephew (who came along) that the United States is a peaceful country with millions of citizens united for peace. But then I saw with my own eyes the hypocrisy and vicious hatred that so many marchers had for America. Mike, those people were openly anti-American. I saw it with my own eyes. You could cut the anti-Ameri- canism with a knife. . . . The ANSWER event was not a peace march - it was a virulent anti-American march. . . .

"For the demonstrators there is some kind of moral equivalence between us and Saddam."

Not terribly surprising, considering that ANSWER, the group that sponsored the march, is affiliated with an unreconstructed hard-left Marxist fringe that in the past has expressed admiration for the murderous Joseph Stalin, dictator Kim Jong-Il of North Korea and war crimes indictee Slobodan Milosevik.

Oh, but the marchers didn't necessarily support that? OK, think about who would go to a civil rights march sponsored by the Ku Klux Klan, and then wonder why ANSWER's sponsorship was fine by those attendees.

Next, there are all the people who keep demanding more proof that Saddam Hussein has both evil intentions and the means to carry them out. True, there have been no Cuban-missile-crisis photos - yet - but there are at least two major talks they haven't heard yet, either. One will come this Wednesday, when Secretary of State Colin Powell speaks to the United Nations, and the other will come after that, when President Bush addresses the nation again.

Anybody who doesn't think Saddam is a threat both to his neighbors and the West has not been paying attention - deliberately, I believe, because U.N. inspectors themselves say he has tons of lethal stuff he won't account for - but those speeches should satisfy all but the same people who attended the "March for Peace."

What is truly dangerous is the demand by some that they must see a "smoking gun" before they'll back Bush. In that, they show less support for America than the leaders of Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Denmark and the Czech Republic, who sent a letter last week proclaiming "New Europe's" strong support for Bush. France and Germany had better start worrying about the perils of unilateralism.

In truth, what would a "smoking gun" be? Well, it might be a mushroom cloud forming over Manhattan; or a radioactive "dirty bomb" ex- ploding a few blocks upwind of the Capitol or the White House; or letters full of finely milled anthrax being sent not to a few congressional offices but to hundreds; or a thousand vials of smallpox infecting tens of thousands of people, with a death rate of 30 percent or more among the unvaccinated victims.

Folks, we don't need those kinds of smoking guns. We don't even need them drawn from their holsters. We may not be able to find each and every member of al-Qaida yet, but as the president said Tuesday, we've found a number of them, and they won't be bothering us any more. Their leader, Osama bin Laden, hasn't been reliably heard from since December 2001, and could be among the group Bush mentioned.

It's no easy decision to go to war, and I even have some sympathy for Bill Clinton, who has been strongly criticized for not dealing with terrorism and Saddam after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and subsequent terror attacks abroad.

But that was all prior to Sept. 11. We've seen two of our tallest buildings fall in fire and ruin, seen people jump from the 80th floor because that was better than being incinerated in their offices, seen our military headquarters lethally attacked.

Still, you may want more than this. If you're patient for a week or a month, I think you'll get it.

Myself, I've seen and heard enough. Saddam delendus est.

- M.D. Harmon, an editorial writer and editor, can be reached

at mharmon@pressherald.com or 791-6482.

[palmer]

What I don't share with you is an acceptance of the status quo. The US will have to assert itself in this part of the world if it is to prevent a repeat of 9/11. It is foolish to consider this crisis in our own terms, as if we were trying to make peace with Canada, or something. In that part of the world, it is better to be feared than loved, and being loved is probably not possible anyway.

In WWII we wanted both. We vanquished our enemies but then helped rebuild them. You are probably right that we won't be loved but our country hasn't traditionally fit in the role of being feared at least not for long periods of time.

[palmer]

America cannot tolerate the Loss of ANY SOULS!!

It's too late for that sentiment: terrorists will never stop trying to kill us. However it's very encouraging that none have been successful since 9/11. I give a lot of credit to our intelligence for refocussing on the new threats.

[FreepLady]

"Also somewhat safer (or less apprehensive) keeping Iraq the way it is,"


You mean, such as that madman using hot irons on children, or killing their parents in front of them?

[palmer]

war propaganda is a common but poor excuse to start wars

[Victoria Delsoul]

Anybody who doesn't think Saddam is a threat both to his neighbors and the West has not been paying attention - deliberately, I believe, because U.N. inspectors themselves say he has tons of lethal stuff he won't account for.

Agree. Thanks Sam.

[Arpege92]

You think that doing nothing to Saddam will cut down on those who want to join the terrorists? If anything, it would make things worse. For eight years, this country has been attacked and those who were responsible were never brought to justice....don't you think that makes this country weaker if we do nothing? They see us as weak and unable or not interested in keeping ourselves safe and that creates the illusion that it is ok to attack the United States cause they are not going to do anything about it anyway.

Do you for one minute believe that the countries these terrorists are from sit around and debate the attacks done to the United States. I don't think their are those who march and protest the attacks on our country....if given a chance to completely wipe us out I know they would do it!

[palmer]

There are terrorists who would push the button to kill all of us if they had a button. No doubt Saddam would also like to have such a button although I doubt he would push it if it meant instant death for him. The question is whether toppling Saddam makes any difference to a terrorist and I say it will not. If anything they will be heartened at seeing us waste our energy lashing out at a regime that they hate anyway.

[GailA]

You can thank Nashville talk host Steve Gill for finding this one.

[GailA]

Nashville talk host Steve Gill talked about it this morning. I listen to him via the net as our local guys in Memphis support a state income tax and I REFUSE to listen to their socialist bleatings.

[GailA]

Saddam made his first KILL at age ELEVEN according to the History Channel..they are NOT a Right Wing source of info..more or less down the middle. What makes you think a SOCIOPATH like that wouldn't unleash WMD's?

[Dr. Frank fan]

I am saying the Iraqis will be more angry and insulted at the US than they hate Saddam, even as they celebrate Saddam's ouster.

Um, ok, we'll see. Anyway I'm glad you backed away from your earlier implied statement that Saddam isn't truly hated by his people. (That is the implication of what you said.)

Again, I didn't bring up Yugoslavia, the author of the article did.

I'm not sure why you're so convinced that "who brought it up" is the important thing here. To me the important thing is that you've implied quite clearly that it's inconsistent or hypocritical to be against the Yugo war but not an Iraq war, and after repeated attempts to get you to back up your statement, you still have not. I couldn't care less that you "didn't bring it up". You may not have "brought it up" but you piled on, didn't you?

I merely point out that unqualified inconsistency can occur from either viewpoint.

You lost me. Where is the part where you either finally back up your statement, or disavow it? I'm patient, I can wait.

[Dr. Frank fan]

I don't think war is that predictable. Do you think we have a plan for all contingencies such as the overthrow of the government of Saudi Arabia?

I don't know. Do you?

The funny part now is that if one combines your last two messages you're basically saying (1) no one can possibly plan for every contingency, and (2) you won't support a war unless they plan for every contingency. Say what?

["plan"] Personally, I doubt it.

Wait, so you only "doubt it"? But you seemed so sure this was a "thoughtless war" and a "war without a plan" in your previous post. What happened, you actually realized that you couldn't possibly back up those charges, right? Good for you! :-)

That outcome is just an example, one of hundreds of possible outcomes. There are good possible outcomes also, but that's not all we should be thinking about.

Sure thing, let's think about all the possible outcomes under the sun. Think away. But endless thought only leads to paralysis; at some point we have to actually choose something. I won't stop you from doin' all this thinking as the bombs are dropping, of course.

[Arpege92]

"The question is whether toppling Saddam makes any difference to a terrorist and I say it will not"


This is where you and I differ.....a war with Iraq is just not about toppling Saddam, it sends a message as well. During the eight years of Clinton when the attacks were steady, he sat back and talked the big talk but never really did anything. The only terrorist attack he dealt with was Timothy Mcveigh who bombed the FBI building in Oaklahoma. That was easy for him, the man was a white American and noone was going to make a stink about prosecuting him.

[palmer]

We're not tracking again. I pointed out that war has unpredictable consequences, possibly quite negative. I didn't say we had to predict them or plan for them all before we could start a war, only that we must recognize that a war, unlike the current sanctions, can spillover into other countries, can turn into a quagmire, can result in destruction of oil supplies. War needs to be avoided for the simple reason that it has unpredictable consequences.

Boxing Saddam in with sanctions has drawbacks, but it doesn't add wildcards.

[Trust but Verify]

He is not going to attack the US. The only situation where he would use WMD against the US is if he sees American troops crossing his desert,

Really? And you know this how? If you don't think that Saddam would surrepticiously give bio or chem weapons to agents of terrorist organizations who would use them to attack the US, you are not thinking this through. What better way for him to accomplish his goal of punishing us without directly attacking us.

[Trust but Verify]

I guess the anti-war people want to have it both ways. They want to say we're not giving the inspectors enough time and they also want to say we've given Saddam too much time to prepare his defenses. Which one is it?

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

Given this, it's quite fair to evaluate whether, in their past statements, they lived up to the general principles they are pretending to follow. That's where Yugoslavia comes in. Were these "anti-war" folks so "anti-war" in that case? Some of them were, actually. But most of them were not. It's a pretty clear-cut case of hypocrisy.

No the anti-war left was against the Yugoslavian fiasco as was the non-interventist hard-right. I remember the protests. I was in fact at the Ohio State town meeting where Albright and others were jeered during their war tour. However you fail to make the distinction between the democrap leftist politicians in congress backing Clinton for political reasons and the anti-war left. Don't discount that the media largely ignored those anti-war protests. I believe there were more of them against the Yugoslavian invasion than Iraq.

[Cacophonous]

I don't claim to speak for all the anti-war folks, and I would encourage you to consider that those that are against this thing are not a monolithic pile (unlike, apparently, those lemmings that support it and anything with the GOP label).

As for me, I've long thought the inspections are a sham: of course Saddam Hussein has WMD (even if they haven't been found). He's had them since the '80s, when we gave them to him to help him in his war against Iran (the enemy du jour of the era).

My reaction to that is: "So what?" He is not a threat to the US, or he certainly would have used them in the last year when President Bush began thumping his war chest. The only time Saddam has used them is in a war, the one with Iran, and some claim, the Kurds. (Actually, the CIA has determined that the chem weapons that hit the Kurds came from Iran, and not Iraq.) I guess we're determined to give him his war and his excuse.

Saddam is not foolish enough to engage the US toe-to-toe in a war; he knows he will lose. But when a fellow has nothing to lose, and is backed into a corner, he will do anything.

So what have we done? We've made it clear that we are going to invade Iraq, no matter what he says he has or doesn't say, or shows what he destroyed (how would one do this? Point to a hole in the ground and say, "There one isn't?") or doesn't show, and no matter what the inspectors find or don't find.

This has been our intent all along: invade Iraq. When the linkages to 11 September were not found, not even circumstantially, we developed this sham of a WMD inspection process. It doesn't matter: we're going to invade.

We've backed him into a corner.

So what is Saddam, the rat backed in the corner with nothing to lose, going to do? He's going to launch his WMD at American troops, maybe at Israel. Why not? I repeat: HE HAS NOTHING TO LOSE. Again: HE HAS NOTHING TO LOSE.

My concerns are not with the inspections (again, a sham, as anything connected to the UN is bound to be) it is with the fact that American troops are going to get chem- or bio-bombed because we want to beat the crap out of Saddam Hussein. The loss of American troops is apparently of little concern to the neo-Con crowd.

But to close your argument: since we were going to invade all along, why didn't Bush launch an attack 30 seconds after his State of the Union speech last year? That would have been something to see, and would have been doing it right. Giving him a year to prepare himself is asinine.

[Cacophonous]

Again, I didn't bring up Yugoslavia, the author of the article did.

I'm not sure why you're so convinced that "who brought it up" is the important thing here. To me the important thing is that you've implied quite clearly that it's inconsistent or hypocritical to be against the Yugo war but not an Iraq war, and after repeated attempts to get you to back up your statement, you still have not. I couldn't care less that you "didn't bring it up". You may not have "brought it up" but you piled on, didn't you?

I merely point out that unqualified inconsistency can occur from either viewpoint.

You lost me. Where is the part where you either finally back up your statement, or disavow it? I'm patient, I can wait.

What proof do you want?

The notion that those who categorically support Bush and his efforts--let's call them GOP lemmings, or anti-Dem Party lemmings, if you prefer--(war or otherwise) while categorically castigating Clinton and his are just as hypocritical as those who categorically supported Clinton and his efforts--let's call them Dem Party lemmings, or anti-GOP lemmings, if you prefer--(war or otherwise) while categorically castigating Bush and his stands on its own merit.

Condensed, lemmings for both parties are hypocrites.

If you are having trouble understanding this, then I would kindly suggest you remove your GOP blinders.

[Trust but Verify]

First of all, I do not think Saddam using chem/bio weapons is a foregone conclusion. He has to have people who will obey his order to use them and I question whether he has anyone loyal/crazy enough under his control to do that.

Secondly, please explain to the rest of us how it is Bush would have been politically or logistically prepared to launch a war in Iraq last January. I'd like to hear that one. The fact is, he is always going to have advance warning because we have to deploy, deploy, deploy in order to have enough men and material in place for a mass attack halfway around the world.

I would rather have a president like we have who is willing to take risks to do what is right and in our interests than one who is willing (even eager) to sign agreements with despots that aren't worth the paper they're written on just to avoid doing something potentially damagin to his precious legacy.