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Axis of Evil
Iraq: ''We got nuttin'!''
2002-12-07
The Iraqi government presented to the rest of the world Saturday a hodgepodge a mass of documents detailing its nuclear, chemical and biological activities and formally declaring to the United Nations that it has no weapons of mass destruction.
''Nope! Not us!''
Iraqi officials displayed the giant declaration, totaling more than 12,000 pages, to the international media at mid-afternoon. It was expected to be handed over to U.N. officials in Baghdad by late Saturday and flown out Sunday on a U.N. plane, to reach U.N. headquarters in New York and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna by late Sunday. The U.N. Security Council had set Sunday as the deadline. On a table in a government office, reporters were shown bound copies of volumes devoted separately to nuclear, chemical, biological and missile activities titled in English, "Currently Accurate, Full and Complete Declarations." The mass of paper, in volumes spread across the table, was accompanied by computer disks, presumably with additional information. A dozen Iraqi officials who worked on the declaration stood by, but refused to comment.
It will be interesting to see how Sammy chooses to play this — we can't really predict, because prediction depends on either clairvoyance or analysis of a rational pattern of thought. With a run of the mill dictator, complete surrender would be out of the question, because it would lead to a bullet in the back of the head at some point down the road. But Sammy really could produce a full and complete accounting and ride it out; he's been painting the humiliating defeat he suffered in Gulf War I as a victory for the "Iraqi knights" since shortly after they surrendered to a helicopter flying over. He has the security and the propaganda machinery to bring it off. But since his love of weaponry is apparently a part of his makeup, he probably won't do that.

Having enough there to keep arguing until spring is probably his tactic in this immediate case, which gives him time to work on breaking up the alliances we've formed. His impending address to the Kuwaiti people today probably says that's what's going to happen.

Another course he could take — and we'll find out soon enough if he did — would be to publish the recipe for each and every weapon of mass destruction in his arsenal in those 12,000 pages with accompanying CDs, publish them or just let the UN do it, and open the entire Pandora's box of WMD worldwide — something similar to the blowoff in Animal House.
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#6  infowars.com infowars.com infowars.com

let the real truth be known
Posted by: Anonymous   2002-12-07 21:45:51  

#5  C'mon, guys, it's more than just getting our order of battle pulled together. We need sufficient logistics, and that takes a while. We need favorable weather -- bad weather hurts the Iraqi military more than us, but the right weather helps us more than them. We need to let the UN comedy-drama play out the third act to give some of our nervous friends the cover they need to support us.

Figure, all things considered, D-day is sometime in mid-February.
Posted by: Steve White   2002-12-07 15:44:30  

#4  If the Pentagod didn't already have the plans drawn up, the entire Joint Chiefs need to be sacked. It's their job to be ready for ANYTHING.
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2002-12-07 14:54:07  

#3  Well, not just a blitchslap but a bitchslap when we suffer no more than 10 casualties. The moment 11th soldier is lost the media will call for unilateral withdrawal. So yes, it takes a year to draw up plans.
Posted by: Anonymous   2002-12-07 14:11:57  

#2  "Ducks in a row"?

Ferchrissakes, we're the single greatest nation on the planet and we're supposed to need more than a year to get our forces together to bitchslap a shitty, third-rate Middle East thugocracy?
Posted by: Emperor Misha I   2002-12-07 13:06:41  

#1  Once again, we see the "wisdom" of Colin Powell's approach. The U.N. was built to prevent any effective use of power. Blix this week said he would not offer any Iraqi scientists assistance in defecting, because that would offend the sovereignty of a U.N. member state. Yet, our intelligence about Iraq's WMD programs all comes from defecting scientists and military officers.

Now Blix is withholding the disclosure documents from the U.S. until he has had a chance to review them himself. The UN is acting more as a conspirator with Saddam than as an enforcer of its own resolutions.

I wonder how long Bush is going to play nice before he's had enough and gives Rumsfeld the nod.
Probably until the Pentagon has all its ducks in a row for invasion.
Posted by: AST   2002-12-07 12:47:32  

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