Be Careful, Washington Times
The Stuff You Are Printing About Iraq Is Total BS
10/29/01 10:51:13 AM
Jude Wanninski / Polyconomics.com
Commentary -- October 29, 2001
Be Careful, Washington Times
Memo To: Bill Giles, Times Managing Editor
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Marching to Baghdad
Now I know some of the editors of the Washington Times want to go to
war with Iraq in the worst way. And maybe it will someday prove to be a
good idea. But I think we should be careful about whipping up war fever
with
sheer propaganda. Don’t you? You know I am a longtime fan of the Times
and was supporting it when it was not popular to do so, with the Moonies
in
charge and all that. So when I suggest you really need to get the boys
and girls to exercise some restraint in what they put into the newspaper
aimed at Iraq, the facts should be straight. Maybe you could designate one
editor to look at all stories mentioning Iraq or Saddam Hussein for
baloney
and slice it out. I would have been happy to do so if I had seen the op-ed
piece by James Phillips “Expanding Beyond bin Laden,” before it went into
your Sunday edition. He is identified as “a research fellow for Middle
Eastern affairs in the Davis Institute for International Studies at the
Heritage Foundation,” and I suppose he knows some stuff about the region.
But
after announcing in the lead paragraph that we have to finish off Saddam,
he
gives us what is almost pure baloney:
Saddam poses a greater threat to U.S. national security than bin Laden
does.
He's been busy building nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass
destruction —— and the missiles to deliver them —— without outside
interference
since the expulsion of U.N. monitors in 1998. He already has used chemical
weapons in his war against Iran and against Iraq's Kurdish opposition.
Now, he
reportedly has the nuclear material necessary to build two atomic bombs
and
soon may finish building such a device, the ultimate terrorist weapon.
First of all, Iraq definitely has not been building nuclear weapons,
according
to the International Atomic Energy Administration, which regularly sends
inspectors to Iraq to check for signs that they may not be in compliance
with
the provisions of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Within the last few
months, the IAEA went to Iraq on its schedule and returned, certifying
complete
compliance. If the Heritage Foundation, which has also been eager to go to
war
with Iraq for the longest time, is being nudged by its Middle East
research
fellow on the grounds that Saddam is about to nuke us or its neighbors,
maybe
it should get a second opinion as well. When the Gulf War ended in 1991,
the
United Nations gave authority to its UNSCOM inspectors to check out
chemical
and biological weapons of mass destruction, which they have not been able
to
find either. For Mr. Phillips to say Saddam has been busy building
chemical and
biological weapons of mass destruction for delivery by missile also
indicates
he has been eating lots of baloney.
Scott Ritter, who was among the most skeptical of the UNSCOM inspectors,
now
says he thinks Iraq is clean of chem-bio. Iraq did have a program
to “weaponize” chem-bio stuff like anthrax, but that was back in the days
of its war with Iran. It gave up when it appeared to be as difficult as it
still is to gas for anything but a battlefield situation when the wind is
blowing in the enemy’s direction.
You’ve known me, Bill, since you hired me back in 1965, when you were top
man
at the National Observer. You know I was a careful reporter back then and
I am
even more careful now, having seen how many difficulties Uncle Sam can
blunder
into when it is acting on bum intelligence. Our Secretary of Defense, Don
Rumsfeld, who signed a petition in 1998 urging war with Iraq on the advice
of
the same gladiators who are spoonfeeding the Heritage Foundation, admits
that
it is impossible to ever guarantee that Iraq is not making chem-bio
weapons,
because it can be done with household ingredients in the back of a
warehouse. I
figured out long ago that our government, yours and mine, was making
believe
Iraq could comply with UNSCOM bureaucrats like Richard Butler and we would
lift
the sanctions. Every diplomat in the world knows this is baloney,
including all
the members of our “anti-terrorist coalition.” The poor American people
don’t
know it because our press corps has failed us. You are one of the most
straight-
arrow, responsible journalists I have ever known in my life. It was a
privilege to work for you at the old Observer. But I will bet dollars to
doughnuts that you believe 100% that Iraq gassed its own people, simply
because
you read it so many times in all the major newspapers. I’ve been trying
for
years to nail this down and I must tell you, Bill, that the evidence is
not
there. I’m not saying he didn’t, but his government insists it didn’t, and
the
only official report I’ve seen, from the Pentagon in 1990, says it is more
likely that the few Iraqi Kurds who were gassed were in the way of Iranian
troops using cyanide gas in the latter stages of the Iran/Iraq war. There
are
plenty of people who are denouncing me for “defending the evil Saddam
Hussein,”
Bill, but I am only trying to make sure we are on solid ground before we
commit
the people of the United States to an unnecessary war.
Here is a link to an article written March 10 of this year for the
internet
news outfit, worldnetdaily, by a good friend of mine, Gordon Prather, a
nuclear
physicist who worked for the Pentagon in the Reagan years, the deputy
assistant
secretary of defense for science and technology. Please read it carefully
and
pass it on to Wes Pruden and your editpage editors. You will learn a lot,
I
promise. And maybe, I hope, it will make a difference.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22007
Libertarian Socialist News
Post Office Box 12244
Silver Spring, MD 20908
http://www.overthrow.com
(check out our messageboards -- discuss this story on-line!)
(Formerly http://www.libertariansocialist.com)
