To: stockman_scott who wrote (46344 ) 9/23/2002 9:36:50 AM From: JohnM Read Replies (2) | Respond to Pat Buchanan's View... The War Party has too much invested in taking down Saddam and taking over Iraq to let itself be sidetracked by U.N. officials chatting with Iraqis about how to inspect weapons plants. And the president, whose popularity has soared to 70 percent, seems to have made up his mind -- for war. Absent regime change in Baghdad in 2003, there could be regime change in Washington in 2004 -- so deeply has this president locked himself into the war box with his bellicosity. A second complication for the White House is finding, in the absence of an Iraqi provocation, a casus belli to justify an attack. For the president to declare Iraq a threat to world peace, while U.N. inspectors are freely driving about the Iraqi countryside, will seem less a justification for war than a Great Power's pretext for launching one. The War Party assures us that the Arab regimes that oppose war publicly will privately toast Saddam's demise. Perhaps. But that does not tell us why these regimes must stand against us. In war, truth is the first casualty -- and truth is already hors de combat. The president tells us that Saddam's Iraq is the greatest threat to world peace anywhere on earth, while retired generals assure us his army is disloyal, his equipment is obsolete, the war will last at most 30 days and U.S. casualties will be minimal.
