Posted by: escott on May 11, 19103 at 23:28:16

Recall Scott Ritter was the ex-marine, ex-UN inspector, former darling of the neocon right (back before 2002), who had the temerity to argue that Iraq had actually gotten rid of most of its WMD's (even the chemical stuff back by mid 1990's)....

Two stunning news items from Sunday's Washington Post (a paper, btw, which was VERY Fox-like in its editorials in support of the war)

1. The rambling news item below, indicating that primary US military WMD hunters are apparently planning to leave Iraq - without having found what the Prez and VPrez have prophesied will be found.... "thousand of tons" of chemical wmd's, etc. -- except that they haven't confirmed a drop yet....

2. There's an even more bizarre op-ed in Sunday's post by Michael Schrage ["No Weapons, No Matter. We Called Saddam's Bluff,"] which argues that we were perfectly justified in launching the war because Saddam was behaving AS IF he had an active WMD program. (sic - read it yourselves.... It's surreal, but I'm not making this up...)

------------------

Is this what it has come to in the making of US foreign policy? Truth is irrelevant.... If a stated foe of the US (or, more likely, of israel) "acts" as if they have an active WMD program (not counting Israel of course), well then, by golly, let's invade them.... (and Fox and MSNBC will trip over each other seeing who can proclaim the most "certain" claims of "evidence" to that effect)

Sigh.... the same pattern is already repeating itself.... Now we have some of the very same lobbyists and Fox-heads (who were so intent to smear Scott Ritter et.al. and relied upon dubious Iraqi expatriates with their own agendas) now proclaiming that Iran is engaged in accelerated WMD's etc. (and they feed their "evidence" to supplicant media outlets) - and as such, we should be supporting the Iranian monarchists in LA or, worse, the terrorists MEK based in Iraq.... to overthrow the Iranian government.... gag. (never mind the utter lack of legitimacy of either movement inside Iran)

Imagine, some Pentagon "neocon" advisors have in the past week actually been pushing for the US to back a well known brutal, Islamic-Marxist terrorist outfit - the Mujahedin-e Khalq - in our supposed war on terror.... (I was among the dozens of independent "scholars" consulted in the original State Dept. branding of the MEK as a "terrorist" outfit.) Thankfully, so far, the Brits and the "softies" at the State Department have been able to get to Bush on this one.... and prevent what could have been one of the most cynical, hypocritical mistakes in US foreign policy history....

end of rant....

FYI

• WP: WMD hunters frustrated

Read the Follow Ups: No WMD --- Honorable Defence Secy's Comments Salil V Gangal 14:23:41 5/28/103 (1) The quote record.... escott 21:29:15 6/02/103 (0) It appears US isn't finished.... Diane 12:31:32 5/12/103 (1) Re: It appears US isn't finished.... Eric 20:23:07 5/12/103 (0)

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