Burger & Fries...

An L.A. Times editorial, No Politics -- Just the Truth, spells out some valid points regarding partisan politics and the questions in Iraq. But it falls short in some key areas. They call for an end to partisan politics in lieu of answering - “Where are the weapons of mass destruction that Bush administration officials insisted the United States needed to destroy because they so urgently threatened this nation? Before the March invasion, there was little evidence that Iraq was trying to develop nuclear weapons but there were hints it possessed biological weapons; many analysts believed Baghdad had chemical weapons or stockpiles that could quickly be assembled into weapons. Yet searches by hundreds of United Nations inspectors before the war and hundreds of U.S. and allied sleuths afterward have turned up nothing.” Two questions are then proposed – “Was, then, the initial intelligence wrong and did the weapons not exist? Or was the intelligence supporting their existence weak and then massaged for political reasons to support the war?” This is Fast-Food Mentality gone awry. In 21st century post-modern America if you can’t download it NOW through your DSL connection, well then… you be laggin’. Setting aside the report by David Kay outlining WMD evidence found thus far… there really are many other questions that should be asked. Namely: Is there evidence of pre-war movement of WMD? What is the likelihood that WMD were concealed pre-war? Given the coordinated attack pattern of post-war Iraqi terrorists, combined with their surprising lack of resistance during the war, what is the likelihood that they planned for WMD concealment pre-war? How easy would it have been to conceal WMD prior to and during the war? (remember how easy the Scud launchers were concealed?… and we knew they existed!) Could WMD have been relocated to neighboring countries? Asking questions such as these frame the expectations a bit differently. Of course, critics seem to think that, since stockpiles of WMD have not been found sitting inside warehouses, they must not exist! Remember back when Israel sent in fighter jets to take out a nuclear processing facility? The WMD did not yet exist… but the potential was there – one that Israel was not willing to wait for. Dylan wrote about it in his song, Neighborhood Bully, “When he destroyed the bomb factory – well, nobody was glad. The bombs were meant for him – he was supposed to feel bad.”