It's not only the WMD

I was channel surfing while spending a Friday night scanning notes and watching DVD movies on my monitor when I saw Ken Adelman of PNAC say the "real weapon of mass destruction" was Saddam Hussein.

(Note: The resolution on a monitor is three times better that of a TV screen. So if you think the Matrix looks good on your TV, well....)

I was irritated when I saw him say such an idiotic thing, but I'm growing less worried about the lack of these weapons than the way we're deploying troops to Iraq. The 3rd Infantry Division needs to come home. They're getting mean and angry. The people around them are growing to hate them. These are conditions ripe for a massacre of some sort. By either side.

The situation in Iraq is getting worse by the day and it's getting to the point where the commanders are not hiding their feelings. You have one division bear the brunt of some very heavy fighting and then you leave them to stew in the heat and mourn their dead.

The Bush Administration, after arrogantly ignoring and punishing our allies, expects them to offer gold and men for our occupation? Someone needs to tell Bush that the world is not like his daddy's friends. They feel no obligation to bail him out of a jam.

If liberals had been this wildly optimistic about human nature, they would have been excoriated as dupes and fools. Has anyone considered that Chalabi wasn't just wrong, but was, in reality, a conman seeking to leverage US power to create his own version of an Iraqi empire. That he purposely lied to the US and conned Rummy and his fellow ideological travelers to get what he wanted? Because, given his track record and conviction in Jordan, as well as open distrust by the CIA analysts, why did they rely so heavily on one man and his shaky network of informants?

As it stands, the US is about to send soldiers to die in Iraqi living rooms because they need to look for weapons in a country which loves them as much as Texans do. Anyone willing to run around Dallas on a gun hunt? I didn't think so.

Bremer is an improvement over Garner in the way that Wendy's is an improvement over McDonald's. At the end of the day, you're still eating a 600 calorie burger, regardless of the taste. The way the US is running the mission is so grossly incompetent, it resembles one of Bush's business decisions. The Iraqis are not going to be happy when we turn on the lights and water. They will have two responses, one, what took so long, two, now that we don't have cholera, why are you still here?

The hunt for WMD is what will cause the fall of governments and the outrage, but it's the management of Iraq, driven by an ideological fervor which would make Trostky happy which will get American soldiers killed at the rate of 1.25 a day, on the slow days.

What is so amazing is that it was clear that the rest of the world would leave us on the hook to pay for Iraq. They didn't need us when they waged the war, let them and the Poles occupy Iraq after it. No European is going to spend one dime to send soldiers to kill Iraqis. Not gonna happen.

The problem for Bush is that no one is going to forget or brush it aside. This is not eminent domain for Arlington Stadium or a busted drilling deal. Americans may have few expectations of their politicians, but other countries don't feel the same way and to be proven a liar, while average Iraqis suffer, will be too much to bear. Bush will be held accountable, so will his government. The blockheaded American isolationism, which has so tainted our war on terrorism, is going to cost us big time. And with the screw the poor tax cut, I doubt most Americans will want to pay for an full-time, long term occupation of Iraq.

I will bet that Bush will look back at March as the best month he's ever had or is gonna have. Because things look bleaker by the day from here on out.

Steve Gilliard

Posted May 31, 2003 12:30 AM | Comments (39)