FROM THE INDEPENDENT (UK)
THESE WEAPONS, THEN...
Hasn't it gone quiet about the once all-important weaponsofmassdestruction? Apart from some muttering heard recently around the corridors of power that Syria's got them, the notion of their existence in Iraq constituting a threat to the safety of the world seems to have been slid quietly to the bottom of the deck. Now the history books will relate how the heroic Coalition went in motivated entirely by the outraged concern that a leading democracy feels when confronted by the spectre of an evil dictatorship.
But they didn't. Their calling card was the present existence of chemical & biological weapons & the future certainty of nuclear weapons. So the UN inspectorate found nothing. No big surprises there for the US belligerents: what was a handful of Old Europe liberals ever going to flush out? Enough of the effete fannying around; enough of the shuffling diplomacy, the politesse, the low-key, long-term probing for evidence. Let's get the gloves off; let's whup us some ass until those pesky towelheads are caught red-handed.
But they weren't. So it was mad, bad old Saddam all along &, hey, didn't we do well? Well, yes, militarily I guess we did (although the families of those caught in the old blue-on-blue might have difficulty with that one). But the Get Saddam imperative was always going to be a strategy with a short fuse on it. Because now that the sherrif's in town & one street's been cleaned up, he's got to go sling lead down the rest of them if the whole town's gonna be safe for you & me.
Tricky. And a bit of a let-down. What the hell did they do with the rest of those chemicals we sold them back in the '80s..?
11:48:38 PM 
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