War Drums

Nice to see that the brief lapse in the frenzy to attack Iraq has reignited (not that it ever went away, but media coverage did). Bush’s and his officials (string-pullers?) have been frantically raising suspicion (even before the weapons inspectors could report their first findings). Rather transparently and unsuccessfully, they claimed Iraq firing on ‘allied’ planes was a ‘material breach’ (and thus reason to start the war). All of this antagonism has been met today by bellicose statements from Iraq - which one may have expected - Iraqi generals seem to respond like clockwork. Looking at the Daily Telegraph (right-wing + bad journalism) I saw a nice example of skewed english usage:
bq. “United Nations inspectors have raided a sinister installation where Saddam
Hussein’s chemical weapons programme began.”
Both the US and the UK (and many other nations) have far more ‘sinister’ installations (because they actually work!). What makes his bombed out facility particularly ‘sinister’? I find it sinister that the very nations that actively gave him those possibilities can make sweeping moral statements about evil without even remotely raising the awareness of their own culpability.
A link on the relationship of Rumsfeld and Hussain during the period (mid to late 80s) of active use by Iraq of its ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (supplied of course, by ‘us’).

Posted by Ian at December 5, 2002 09:10 AM | TrackBack §