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U.S. logic concerning Iraq strains public trust
© St. Petersburg Times As many faithful, if not always approving, readers will hasten to tell me, I'm probably not seeing the big picture. I should trust people in charge who are smarter than I. That's okay, but I want some of the people in charge of the big picture to show me more of it before they start a war. Call me testy. In 1991 Iraq invaded Kuwait, and we went to war with Iraq. They sort of surrendered and promised to allow arms inspections. In 1996 Iraq began blocking inspection attempts, and we began threatening to go back to war. In 1997 they threw out the inspectors, and we made more threats but didn't really do anything except continue economic embargoes, which mostly affected the Iraqi population. Then for a few years we didn't do anything. On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked jetliners and flew them into both towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Thousands of people died. Not long after that we learned that 15 of the 19 people directly involved were Saudi Arabian. Naturally, we began threatening to bomb Iraq. Then we learned that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi businessman, and his group, al-Qaida, were responsible. So we kept threatening to bomb Iraq. Not long ago we learned that the wife of a Saudi prince sent thousands of dollars to a Saudi family in San Diego that had befriended two of the hijackers. We, of course, told Iraq we really weren't kidding and that if it thought we wouldn't bomb it, just try us. A suit filed by some families of the 9/11 victims gives details of millions of dollars paid by a high-ranking Saudi official to charities linked with al-Qaida. We began to announce that it was unlikely war with Iraq could be avoided. Last week the Saudi police minister was quoted in a Saudi newspaper as saying Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. We began calling up troops so we could go to war with Iraq. A while back we told Saddam Hussein -- rather suddenly after saying nothing for five years -- that he had better let the inspectors back in, or risk war. So he let them in. Then we told him if he interfered with their visits that we would come after him. So he didn't. Then we said he had to let them into the palaces, too, or else. So he did. "And you'd better get that arms declaration report in, and we mean it, and it better be complete," we said. So he handed over a 12,000-page report, which our leadership, before it was translated, began speculating was incomplete. Our government knows that, we are told, because it has intelligence information about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction projects and plans, although it can't explain what it knows or how it knows or show anyone any proof. Instead, we are told we should trust our intelligence community. That would be the same intelligence community that missed any hints that the largest terrorist attack in the history of the world was on its way. That would also be the same intelligence community that, in 1999, wrongfully targeted the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, saying it didn't know the embassy had moved, despite that the move was listed in the Belgrade telephone book. And it would be the same folks that let a Kuwaiti woman testify before a congressional committee about Iraqi soldiers' atrocities on infants at a Kuwaiti hospital and didn't bat an eye when it was revealed that she was the daughter of a Kuwaiti diplomat and had not been in the country during the invasion. Yeah, those are the guys with the top secret inside scoop, all right. Also, we are told, we should trust our leadership, those wonderful people who, over the years, have given us the Gulf of Tonkin incident, secret bombings in Cambodia, Peace with Honor, and, "I did not have sexual intercourse with that woman." I don't really feel sorry for Saddam Hussein, and I do think he is evil, but if we are going to keep up the pretense that we need a pretense to go to war with him, it would be nice if our government stopped treating us like a bunch of morons and at least made an effort to join made-up cause with real effect.
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