Salt Lake Tribune | 2003-10-09 | Page 23

The Salt Lake Tribune OPINION Thursday, October 9, 2003 Nothing seems to be going right in the peace from hell Meanwhile,one of the other Now we're going to try gun control billion a year because ofsome : 0 Iraqis.”) NEW YORK, N.Y.—MuchasIhateto we had to cancel that plan. interrupt what is apparently a deeply nice pictures, you have sadly underestimated oo ane sense of this nation. realize Meanwhile, the chaos in Iraq seems to be ; : That should have the enthusiastic support of the NRA. Meanwhile, sales pitches we were given was that, for reasons never ex- ~ having invaded costing us whatever goodwill Hussein would makeit easier to before the invasion, hs don'tyouthink itshouat asoan ae _— pe oeAme =" i eerteak picky, but there are still 90 with his Roadmap to Peace, and the Is- noticeably grateful. The Shiites hate us, Cam see any cause forcelebrant NGS ceneah Mingenenee Soeee so memorably described by Bush as “a we're hiring old Ba’athite thugs to run smpped hoking I M OLLY IVINS Since Iraq never had anything i to attempt a full FORTWORTH STAR-TELEGRAM to do with al-Qaeda or Sept. 11 certainly, — despite American public evaluation. historical cutting that proposal. The always OK, if this is the situation, and it’s unhelpful Palestinian terrorists at- ,. re : certainly what'sbeing reported,I don’t 2004, bility that by November cans will very much want everybody to ‘cked. and Sharon counterattacked Ooteaeares ie forget the war now called Dubya Dubya there anyone who said we wouldn't? Since I am in the happy position of hav- for that one, but it’s not original with me.) felt a on the American it’s over, right, now doesanyone seeany reason on that what we see costing us whatevergoodwill we earnedfor the chaos in Iraq seems to be plained, getting rid of Saddam where we stand, but there is @ getting rid ofSaddam Hussein, the one subetantiol badlyof neues = we earned forgetting rid of make peace between Israel and Saddam Hussein, the one un- the Palestinians. It's not looking unmitigatedgood to have comefrom all this. nethan oa encourag: Tits ie sheets cheaper aeWe may yet see hopettal de- velopment but damnedif Tate to be picky, picky. ""Srecigent” Bush came ot building weapons of mass destruction. rapiis took the first exit. Ariel Sharon, the Kurds are killing the Arabs, and even page tig evdenbeidhot man of peace,” wasted no time under- These are early days, Could be a case of the forest and the opinion on this issue — it was certainly trees. Perhaps we're well along the road no surprise to see al-Qaeda back again, with strikes in both Saudi Arabia and Morocco. . Bush's announcement that we had broken up the organization seems to have been a trifle premature. There was to having everything work out magnificently, and I'm just missing it. Still, I can’t see anything that’s going right. Iraq is in chaos, and apparently the only way we'll be able to stop it will be to kill a lot of Iraqis. Just what Saddam used todo. The other day, we announced we were going to shoot looters, and when that producednightmare scenarios of children dead for stealing bread, and then canceled his trip here to discuss the peace plan. The usual ugly pictures and refueled resentments ensued, the same-old, same-old of this 50-yearold cycle. So far, getting rid of Saddam seems to have had zero effect on this old deadlock. Meanwhile, Iraq looks more and more as though it will be costing us the high-end estimate of $20 billion a year, much unmuted griping from American intelligence about the total Saudi failure to cooperate before the attack there. (As one antiwar sign reminded us before the recent events, “Sept. 11 equals 15 Saudis, for which the Iraqis have yet to appear things. real possi- emaghant paren carrier. There’s a very Republi¢raft ..,. a hia BIES Se sahant sreeSeine oak tri Il. (Sorry, I don't know whom to credit ing predicted a short, easy war and the peace from hell, I think I’m looking like a genius prognosticator about now. I can’t figure out why the Republicans are happy aboutthis. Sure, it was a great photo-op for the president on the I've got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be killed in the peace than in the war, and more Iraqis will be killed by Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I've had a bet out that I hoped I'd lose. aircraft carrier, but if you think the American people won't notice $20 Report confirmsthat Bush preempted Saddam's imminence A few weeks ago, I read re actual report — rather than marks attributed to weapons inspector David Kay that his report would offer ample evidence of programs of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)in Iraq. Fastforward to last week, newsstories about the report by biological agents. But, as most news outlets whose preference for bad news noted as dramatically as possible, he found no stocks of weap» when Kay made his long-awaited interim report. Imagine my surprise when I read stories in papers such as The New York Times that Saddam's alleged arsenal was just a bunch of precursors, potentials and bluffs. Imagine my surprise when I read that Kay’s report confirmed that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States or our allies, and that, therefore, there Everybody knows that Bush cast Iraq as an imminentthreat, right? We know it the same way words and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Sad- that, despite enormous physical two reasons. One, because whatever they find will be different from prewar intelligence. Discovering those differences is critical to the quality offuture intelligence and thus future security. And two, chillingly, he said: “We have found people, technical information and illicit procurement networks that if allowed to flow to other countries and regions could accelerate global we know that one in seven dam Hussein is not a strategy, — if not a Demo ons. Bada-bingo. women in college have been cratic president — is in longer no raped and that more women are Victims of domestic violence on question. What Kay also said — and in fact what constitutes Super Bow! Sunday than any What Kay really says inhisreportis that he and his inspectors have found the first two long paragraphs of his report — is that we are nowhere close ~— i iin its ings, e “know” even though they are not factully true, because we've read and it is not an option.” In other words, Bush pre empted Saddam’s imminence. Yet news outlets repeatedly headlined stories such as this one, for example, from Radio Free Europe on Oct. 8, 2002: “Iraq: Bush tells Americans Saddam is — “dozens of WMD- related program activities and signifi cant amounts of equipment that Iraq : KATHLEEN P ARKER to being finished. and heard them repeated so of- His report “is a ten. So it goes with “imminent snapshot,” he said, threat” even though Bush, facand “much re mains to bedone.” ‘ually, claimed the opposite in both his address to Congress a United Nations dursaid in perfectly theUnion address. Inthe Stateof ing the inspections that began in good English: “It is far too early ‘he Union address, he said: was no justification for war against Iraq. late 2002.” Had Kay been lying in that earlier story? Faking us out? of a laundry list of findings that should chill a vampire, inchud- to reach any And that’sjust the beginning conclusions.” Teasing with promises to keep us ing a clandestine network of lab- riveted only to make us the oratories suitable for chemical world’s deadliest fools later on? and biological warfare research So one might think that un- and a prison lab complex possi- less one bothered to read Kay’s bly used in the human testing of definitive Yet, conclusions have been reached. Again and again, stories regurgitate claims that Bush exaggerated the case for war against Iraq by insisting that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat. ~Somehavesaid we must notact until the threat is imminent, Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge,all actions,all an imminent threat.” Several paragraphs into this same story, reporter Andrew F. Tully, wrote: “But the U.S. president said this urgency does not mean that war is imminentor inevitable.” Come again? Toward the end of his report, Kay said that, barring conclu- sions, this much is clear: “Saddam ... had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction.” Perhaps most importantofall were Kay's concluding remarks risk to inspectors, they are committed to finishing the task for proliferation.” And that is after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. 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