For superhawks who really,really, really want a war - at any cost, but "just never had time to serve," they can sign up NOW for the ultimate life (and death) experience.
Joe Conason's Journal ~Salon~
Sept. 30, 2002 |Mooning Bush
Those soft-on-Saddam appeasers in the liberal media are still busy undermining the White House case for unilateral war. Those blame-America-first types are saying we sold Iraq biological and chemical weapons, and that the president is wrong about Baghdad's nuclear weapons program.
Oh, sorry -- that isn't the liberal media, it's the Washington Times. The ultra-right-wing Beltway daily not only scooped the rest of the press corps, but published an important story last Friday that is highly unfavorable to the president and his position on Iraq. Apparently reporter Joseph Curl called the International Atomic Energy Authority in Vienna to request a damning report cited by Bush on Sept. 7.
Remember? The president stood next to Tony Blair and said, "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied -- finally denied access [in 1998], a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA -- that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need." We need more, because that evidence doesn't exist, as an IAEA spokesman told Curl. The story gets funnier, in that dark Washington way, when the reporter calls the White House for comment. Would the president "mislead" the public about war, as Rep. Jim McDermott said so bluntly over the weekend from Baghdad? Perhaps not, but the only other explanation is that he has been badly misled himself. (If Bush knows how to surf the Web he should stop relying on Condi and start looking up this information himself. There's almost always an executive summary. For example, the IAEA's actual reports and other information about Iraq's efforts to build an atom bomb are available here.)
If all this makes you wonder whether we're going to war because Saddam tried to kill the president's dad, there are some American veterans asking about that, too. They love their country at least as much as the tough-talking superhawks (like the bug exterminator and the Ole Miss cheerleader) who just never had time to join the service.
[8:10 a.m. PDT, Sept. 30, 2002] |
