Friday, September 05, 2003
You Gotta Love The Guy
I'm talking about John Bolton -- bushy hair and mustache -- undersecretary of state for arms control, under whose watch two countries previously non-nuclear are on the nuclear verge -- not any two countries, that would be Iran and North Korea, two-thirds of the Axis of Evil -- yes, that John Bolton. Why gotta love him, you are asking yourselves? Because out of the mouths of babes and neo-cons often emerge truths that would be embarrassing to all but babes and neo-cons.
Where Condi Rice, Cheney, even Sec. Powell and the President himself have felt the need to obsfucate in defense of their various Iraq policies, often speaking as though any menacing fact provably true about Iraq or Saddam at any time since 1970, could be commandeered as an on-going threat in 2003, John Bolton, in an interview with the AP, has blurted out what all the others really meant:
Who can argue with that? I'm certainly ready to concede that Saddam hadn't given up his dreams. Saddam needed to be dealt with at some point. The woeful impact on the Iraqi people of the sanctions regime needed to be dealt with sooner than that.
Now, maybe, we can have a sensible discussion of whether or not the choice of a full-scale invasion of Iraq, whose purpose was not only to remove Saddam, but just as important to the administration though rarely discussed in the SCLM, to deliver the country of Iraq, its land, resources and people, into the hands of Americans, was really the best use of our resources in our struggle against Al Queda and other forms of stateless terrorism,
Now, maybe, we can talk about what could or could not have been accomplished through the UN, and what "international constraints" short of war and occupation, could have been brought to bear to hinder his dreams of reconstituting his WMD. (More on this subject in a later post)
Mr. Bolton made these remarks in Paris, where he was attending an international conference whose subject was interdiction at sea of nuclear materials, a subject of great importance to this administration, since it's North Korean policy seems designed to force North Korea to arm itself with nuclear weapons, at which point the President will have another golden opportunity to play tough guy, threaten a blockade, promise to interdict unilaterally and at will, and warn that if NK attempts to export either bombs, technology, or fissionable material, such will be regarded as an act of war, and could invite a nuclear response. Gosh, I feel safer already.
Perhaps this administration's worst, most lasting legacy will be to have dismantled the entire international infrastructure for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, although among the sheer number of tragic Bush legacies in the works it's difficult to choose. And no policy is more likely to undo current constraints on proliferation than development of a whole new generation of more useable (i.e., easier to think about as conventional) nuclear weapons.
If you like Wm Wegman, Weimaraners, or just dogs in general, click here and do something about it.
Where Condi Rice, Cheney, even Sec. Powell and the President himself have felt the need to obsfucate in defense of their various Iraq policies, often speaking as though any menacing fact provably true about Iraq or Saddam at any time since 1970, could be commandeered as an on-going threat in 2003, John Bolton, in an interview with the AP, has blurted out what all the others really meant:
".....whether Saddam's regime actually possessed weapons of mass destruction "isn't really the issue."
"The issue I think has been the capability that Iraq sought to have WMD programs," Bolton said at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
Bolton said that Saddam kept "a coterie" of scientists he was preserving for the day when he could build nuclear weapons unhindered by international constraints.
That fact, combined with Iraq's history of deceiving U.N. inspectors, showed that Saddam could not be trusted to abandon his ambition to develop unconventional weapons, Bolton said.
"Whether he possessed them today or four years ago isn't really the issue," he said. "As long as that regime was in power, it was determined to get nuclear, chemical and biological weapons one way or another."
Who can argue with that? I'm certainly ready to concede that Saddam hadn't given up his dreams. Saddam needed to be dealt with at some point. The woeful impact on the Iraqi people of the sanctions regime needed to be dealt with sooner than that.
Now, maybe, we can have a sensible discussion of whether or not the choice of a full-scale invasion of Iraq, whose purpose was not only to remove Saddam, but just as important to the administration though rarely discussed in the SCLM, to deliver the country of Iraq, its land, resources and people, into the hands of Americans, was really the best use of our resources in our struggle against Al Queda and other forms of stateless terrorism,
Now, maybe, we can talk about what could or could not have been accomplished through the UN, and what "international constraints" short of war and occupation, could have been brought to bear to hinder his dreams of reconstituting his WMD. (More on this subject in a later post)
Mr. Bolton made these remarks in Paris, where he was attending an international conference whose subject was interdiction at sea of nuclear materials, a subject of great importance to this administration, since it's North Korean policy seems designed to force North Korea to arm itself with nuclear weapons, at which point the President will have another golden opportunity to play tough guy, threaten a blockade, promise to interdict unilaterally and at will, and warn that if NK attempts to export either bombs, technology, or fissionable material, such will be regarded as an act of war, and could invite a nuclear response. Gosh, I feel safer already.
Perhaps this administration's worst, most lasting legacy will be to have dismantled the entire international infrastructure for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, although among the sheer number of tragic Bush legacies in the works it's difficult to choose. And no policy is more likely to undo current constraints on proliferation than development of a whole new generation of more useable (i.e., easier to think about as conventional) nuclear weapons.
If you like Wm Wegman, Weimaraners, or just dogs in general, click here and do something about it.
