Here's an interesting theory... Al
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Now it's right war, wrong reason
By Daniel Schorr
WASHINGTON – "If we are wrong [about Iraq and weapons of mass
destruction]," said Prime Minister Tony Blair before Congress last
week, "we will have destroyed a threat that, at its very least, is
responsible for inhumane carnage and suffering."
President Bush was not ready to
concede the possibility of having invaded
Iraq on a wrong premise. Standing next
to Mr. Blair at the White House, he said,
"We won't be proven wrong." However, he
did not say that he would be proven right.
A school of thought is emerging that
Saddam Hussein was not so much
covering up his possession of banned
weapons as his lack of them.
The Wall Street Journal reported that in 1990, weeks before the Gulf
War, Iraqi scientists ran an unsuccessful test of a biological agent
called ricin, made from castor beans, and then scrapped the
program.
In The Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius speculates that
Hussein's science adviser, Amir Saadi, and Deputy Prime Minister
Tariq Aziz are being kept under wraps by the American authorities
because they might testify that the dictator had long since destroyed
his weapons of mass destruction.
Why, then, would he have not disclosed that fact to the United
Nations inspectors? Presumably, says Mr. Ignatius, because he
would lose a deterrent to attack by his Kurdish and Shiite enemies.
The New Republic magazine goes further in a major article, based
partly on interviews with Iraqi scientists. It says that fear of Hussein
kept scientists from telling him of weapons programs that had failed
or were scrapped.
If the weapons were gone, then why didn't Hussein cooperate with
UN inspectors to establish that and possibly avert an invasion? The
consensus among the weapons hunters, says The New Republic, is
that Hussein didn't want to appear weak at home and that uncertainty
about the weapons could serve as a deterrent to American forces.
The president insists that piles of weapons will eventually be found.
Blair says that piles of bodies are enough to justify the war.
As the days and weeks drag on with no sign of an arsenal of banned
weapons, it looks as though the occupiers of Iraq are slowly moving
their thesis to the idea of the right war for the wrong reason.
It remains to be seen whether that switch in the propaganda line will
fly. |
