Daily Archives: June 28, 2003

Iraq: WMD

This marks my 30th consecutive weblog entry. Not too shabby. I’m going to keep working on it. And now, to the topic at hand:

Perhaps the reason I had such mixed feeling about the war was that I was being duped the whole time. It’s still the pre-emptive war idea. Throughout that time, Iraq did not pose any immediate threat. I still believe that the weapons inspections would have done no good. Once they let up, Iraq would simply start up again. I’m sure they had equipment, but, again, they didn’t pose any immediate threat to the world, as the Bush administration was trying to make us believe.

Iraq is a big place, but it seems they should have been able to, by now, act on some evidence they were holding earlier. I admired Bush’s handling of Sept. 11, and I do lean towards the conservative side, but this makes me feel dumb. I feel as if I was the recipient of a nasty prank, only multiply that by a lot. Maybe they can redeem themself if they ever find something.

I should have thought about this earlier, but just what the hell is a “weapon of mass destruction.” It’s a vague term. Is there even any real formal definition?

Gulf War II seems to have produced okay results, nothing too unexpected. (If you honestly believe all those people would be immediately pacified, you need your head examined.) I just wonder how long we’ll be there. How long is too long? How long is not long enough? Everyone has a different definition. It’s impossible to please everyone.

The main problem, I think, was that the stated reason for going to war was wrong. We didn’t go in for just one reason, but that’s the way it was presented to the American public, and the world. We already knew Saddam was a murderer. Could we have stated that we were going in there for humanitarian reasons? I’m just wondering if that would have been reason enough. In my eyes, it is, but for the UN…?

Saddam is still missing. If I was in charge of propaganda, I would emphasize that this is a non-issue. “Saddam is currently a loser, that ran away at the beginning of the war. He has no power. We just don’t care if he’s alive or dead.”

The Bush administration could also redeem itself if it emphasized any links it found with Saddam and Al-Qaeda. At least, that’s what I think. I don’t think they’ll find any WMD because the definition is too vague. Maybe if they just emphasized all the illegal weapons they had.

This issue is far from over, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty more opportunity to write commentary.