Kat,

Our comb really hasn't been that fine-toothed yet.  The Iraqi "players" had
plenty of time during the saber-rattling buildup to hide whatever they
needed to hide.  The bio/chem agents don't really need much in the way of
facilities to store the end product--they could be in a Baath house (no pun)
anywhere in sympathetic territory.  The radiological agents would be more
difficult to store, but if you could find a zealous party member who was
ignorant to the safety issues that wouldn't be a big deal either.  Iraq
ain't Russia, but it's certainly not Rhode Island either.

My take is that we've probably found a boatload of stuff already with CIA,
SAS and Spec Ops operators on the ground in Iraq and Syria.  It may be in
our best interest to keep this quiet now so that other operations are not
compromised.  I look at it this way:  As long as you keep my kids and my
country safe, I don't need to know how you do it--just do it.  Since the
"shooting war" is pretty much over, the media have packed up their cameras,
their Christiane Ammanpours and gone home or elsewhere.  The real work can
now begin without a bunch of "imbedded reporters" wanting to know what it's
like to take a dump in the desert.

Here are some hard truths that will make people mad, but also make it safer
to be American:

We are the only superpower in the world.  That makes folks like French
bureaucrats mad because their collective memory recalls the days when they
were a superpower too.

Being the world's superpower, we can operate with diplomatic and military
impunity--anywhere, anytime.  That also raises the hair on the collective
necks of the former colonizing nations.  All I can say to them is:  every
world power has had their glory days and then faded into impotence.  This
will happen to America some day, just not today.

It was American idealism that ended centuries of colonialism and conquest by
nations all over the world.  Americans still operate, militarily and
politically (to some degree), with that idealism and sense of "fair play".
If there's going to be a "superpower" the world's nations should actually be
relieved it's the US and not some other nation that does not have the same
sense of national altruism (though it does wax and wane, it's still always
there).

Too many have lost the sense of outrage that was common on 12 September
2001.  There were far fewer civilian deaths in Hawaii on 7 December 1941,
yet the collective cry for justice lasted far longer and was more strident
sixty years ago.  Our attention span is so short that once the cool camera
shots of bombs and bullets start to thin we are back to fretting about the
economy and whether or not the Kentucky Derby was fairly won.  We have this
luxury because our military might is so overwhelming and our sentries, on
the whole, are so good at catching the would-be terrorists--and we have
brave young men and women, British, American and ohers, who are willing to
go do things that, on the surface, seem cold & callous.  Even cruel.

We don't need to know the details of their mission or who's arm they twisted
to gather the secrets.  We don't want to know.  We shouldn't know--no matter
what CNN's producers or Geraldo Rivera or the UN Security Council say.  Just
remember that the next time you get out of bed to go to a peace march or an
ani-Bush rally, that there is some American, Canadian or British kid with a
rifle searching in the rain and snow and heat in the wilds of Northeast
Afghanistan or the Syrian border for someone who would have you executed in
his country for marching; who would kill your children and parents for not
wearing the burkha; who would castrate you or chop off your clitoris if you
were even accused of disagreeing with his religious conviction.  Would you
be willing to pay this price for "peace" in an area that has NEVER known the
kind of peace you envision?

So, off soapbox and back to your question, Kat.  I feel strongly that the
WMD destruction is a piss-poor excuse for deposing Sadaam.  I wish that the
administration had thought of something more plausable and concrete.  Hell,
we may never find them, but it sure isn't why we invaded Iraq, and it sure
wasn't for oil, either (silly idea, actually).  We did it to put the horse's
head in the collective beds of Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan.  Using the
language that has been spoken by every leader in the Mesopotamian region
since the beginning of civilization, we told them that you had better keep a
lid on your anti-western zealots, or else.

Kyle
-----Original Message-----
From: Kat [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2003 10:36 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: WMD's? What do you think?


This is a question mainly for Kyle, but anyone can answer. ;-)

Do you think we'll ever find *hard* evidence of WMD's in Iraq?  So far we've
searched the country with a fine-toothed comb and stil have come up with
miminal evidence.  What do you think, Kyle?

That was one of my major concerns before going to war. It was a major
justification for Bush but I wasn't so sure there would be evidence for us
to find for the justification.

Kat