THAT WAS THEN…

For those arguing against going to war against Iraq, here is some additional ammunition that is particularly relevant to the too-little-discussed question of what happens after we do the “regime change.” The source here is quite a high-level one and, as you can see, thoughtful as well: “If you’re going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you’ve got Baghdad, it’s not clear what you do with it. It’s not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that’s currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it’s set up by the United States military when it’s there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?” Our authority: Dick Cheney, quoted in a New York Times interview, which appeared on April 13, 1991, a bit more than a month after the Gulf War ended.

AWARD TO SOREL

Edward Sorel, whose work has often appeared in these pages as well as in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and at international exhibitions, was recently presented with the German Federal Bar Association’s caricature award at a ceremony at the American Academy in Berlin. The prize jury said, “With keen perception and wit he characterizes society, exposing individual vanities and weaknesses.”

NEWS OF THE WEAK IN REVIEW

From our extensive George W. Bush Iraq War Lies Collection: On September 7 he claimed, “I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied, finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic–the IAEA–that they were six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.” Actually, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in 1998 that it “has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material.”