well saidChristopher Hitchens latest piece on Iraq: The question then, becomes this: Should the date or timing of this unpostponable confrontation have been left to Saddam Hussein to pick? The two chief justifications offered by the Bush administration (which did mention human rights and genocide at its first presentation to the United Nations, an appeal that fell on cold as well as deaf ears) were WMDs and terrorism. Here, it is simply astonishing how many people remain willing to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt. The late Dr. David Kelley, whose suicide has so embarrassed the Blair government, put it very plainly in an article he wrote just before the war. Seriousness about "inspections" required a regime change in Iraq—no credible inspection could be conducted on any other terms. This point has since been amply vindicated by the Kay inquiry, still in its early stages, which has already unearthed compelling evidence of a complex concealment program, of the designing of missiles well beyond the permitted legal range, of the intimidation of scientists and witnesses, and of the incubation (in some cases hidden in scientists' homes) of deadly biological toxins. Some of the other leads have turned out to be false, or at any rate not proved, and no major stockpiles have yet been found. Nonetheless, the Baathists declared a very impressive stockpile as late as 1999 and never cared to inform the U.N. inspectorate what they had done with it. (If they destroyed it themselves, it deserves to be pointed out, they were in gross and open breach of the relevant resolutions, which anticipated this tactic and specified that all weapons were to be turned over, listed, classified, and only then neutralized in the presence of certified witnesses.)Go read the whole thing. |
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