THOSE OLD WMDs AGAIN...
Even though Iraq-fatigue is clearly setting in as the world resumes its preoccupation with who's screwing who, the spectre of those weapons of mass destruction just won't go away. Increasingly like the giant bunny rabbit in 'Harvey', that spectre haunts the corridors of power in Britain & the United States. The gamble is a twofold one: either something will, in fact, be found (& presumably strenuous efforts are going on as we speak to dig up - having first buried - the suspect chemical drums), or the great public yawn will be so wide & loud that the spectre will slip away unnoticed.
In preparation for something in between those two scenarios, the coalition governments are now crooning a new song. Inside its seductive melody is a subtle re-phrasing & down-phasing of the original shrill cries from the White House. It seems that it might be quite a while before we actually know for sure that there ever were WMDs. There were, of course, or our respective governments would never have gone to war. But apparently it's possible that they were concealed within other, more benign facilities. Presumably weedkiller today, weapon of mass destruction tomorrow. Marion Wilkinson of the Sydney Morning Herald reports it thus:
President George Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is now acknowledging that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program is less clear-cut, and probably more difficult to establish, than the White House portrayed before the war.
She has no doubt that the US-led coalition, assisted by experts from
Britain and Australia, will find Iraq's WMD programs. But for the first time, Dr Rice is saying publicly that it is less likely many actual weapons will be found. Rather, she described the programs as being hidden in so-called "dual use" infrastructure. In other words, chemicals and biological agents could be in plants, factories and laboratories capable of being used for legal and prohibited purposes.
Almost three weeks since the fall of
Baghdad, with senior Iraqi scientists and officials in US custody, no chemical or biological weapons stockpiles have been found. Neither has any evidence been uncovered that Iraq had restarted a nuclear program.
In explaining the gap between the pre-war and post-war claims on
Iraq's WMD, Dr Rice said the US was now seeing the programs in a different light. "The fact is that we are beginning to see a kind of pattern on how Iraq may have hidden its weapons of mass destruction from the outside world for all of these years," she said this week.
According to Dr Rice, the weapons programs are "in bits and pieces" rather than assembled weapons. "You may find assembly lines, you may find pieces hidden here and there," she said. Ingredients or precursors, many non-lethal by themselves, could be embedded in dual-use facilities.
(c) Marian Wilkinson, Sydney Morning Herald
12:24:19 AM 
|
|
