Readers in Council,
The Japan Times,
5-4, Shibaura 4-chome,
Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023
There is no doubt that the U.S. will engage in a ground war in Iraq regardless of the disapproval of the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, or any other measure of world public opinion. The U.S. government has spent too much money putting almost a quarter-of-a-million troops in the Persian Gulf region to back out - or back down - now. It will have to attack Iraq as a final justification for having spent the money setting it all up. And you know - I might be wrong - but I believe that once the Americans are there in Iraq they will find - wait for it - NOTHING! No concealed caches of weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations weapons inspectors have not found concealed weapons of mass destruction so far not because the Iraqi military establishment is hiding them really cleverly like what the Bush Administration claims and wants us to think, but because they probably really are not there at all. But I will humbly admit that I am wrong if the American invaders do find such hidden caches. Will George Bush match my humble admission of error if his agents find nothing? Not likely. I think what is likely is that there will be such a propaganda hurricane out of Washington during and after war that - well, I don't know what. Just thinking about it makes me feel sick at heart.
This does not mean that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq has not violated any number of U.N. resolutions over the last ten years. Of course it has. But large, secret caches of biological/chemical/nuclear weapons? The United States is the one that has, and is known to have, large caches of such weapons. Everyone knows it and the U.S. does not deny it. Rather, it defends itself for keeping them and would claim that I am the absurd one for pointing it out/protesting it. I mean, it would be said that I benefit from the freedom that the U.S provides, and so who am I to question the manner in which that freedom is provided? (In fact, this has already been written of me in this column - "Look out for more than No. 1," January 5, 2000.) Instead, all others in the world ought rightly to be denied the prerogative of developing and maintaining their own caches and then bow to the self-declared benevolence and virtue of America which does manufacture them, develop them, and maintain them.
The tale of intellectual and moral bankruptcy here is enough to gag a Cyclops.
Published on Sunday, March 9, 2003 as “Too late to turn back now.”
The United States is about money. Having spent the money to set up their unprovoked invasion of Iraq, they won’t turn back.
They want their money’s worth.