Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

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Wednesday, November 27, 2002
13:42 - Inspectors on the scene http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/11/27/iraq.inspectors/index.html	(top)
Well, after a day of activity, evidently nothing obvious has been unearthed by the Blix team. I must admit, I'm more nervous about these proceedings at this stage than I've been about anything in a while. There's so much riding on the inspectors' ability to turn up damning evidence of WMDs-- if they find any, it would cause the long-awaited meltdown of the credibility of Saddam and all his higher-ups who have been claiming all along that they have no such weapons and any claims that they do are evil lies. Not only that, but it would force pretty much everyone who's been seizing every opportunity to side with the UN and European leaders and take Saddam's official claims at their word-- to admit that they were on crack. It would be the clearest case of US vindication on record since 9/11; even Afghanistan continues to have its detractors, and its present political situation remains in doubt (riding primarily on whether we choose to stay and rebuild). But Iraq is another story. Because if for whatever reason the inspectors are not able to turn up any compelling evidence by December 9th... well, the PR consequences would be just about as bad against the US. It's one thing to be Iraq, historic bully and enemy-of-all-that-is-right, who in the absence of incriminating evidence seems to have recently turned over a new leaf and become all benign and happy (and no doubt all kinds of people would come to accept his 100% victory in the recent election as genuine and legitimate). But it's quite another to be America, up till now more or less a "good guy" as far as First World countries are concerned, but with lots of intangible, semi-Washington-endorsed imperialistic aims consisting of Golden Arches and oil tankers, bombing lots of innocent civilians in what is undoubtedly a long series of war-crime atrocities that have been masterfully covered up, so nobody can prove anything for sure-- suddenly turning out to be unequivocally the evil lying oppressor that Iraq makes us out to be. Everybody's worst dread would be realized. We'd be "proven" to have fabricated this whole set of allegations about Iraq's nonexistent weapons and trumped up the war so the Republicans could seize power. The US would become in everybody's eyes the Enemy of the World, by the stroke of a pen in the hand of the Inspector General. I have to imagine the inspectors will take a bit of a different approach this time, though. I have to believe this is going to be a different kind of "inspection" than the "Make sure such-and-such destroyed factory was really destroyed" checklisting of the post-Gulf-War inspections. Interviews I've heard on NPR talk about how some of the inspectors (who are back there again now) were endlessly frustrated by the crap they had to put up with from the uncooperative Iraqis and the things they were obviously hiding, and they were clearly gung-ho about having a chance to get some real progress made this time around. And judging by this, there's all kinds of crap we know about that even local Iraqis don't realize is there. So I guess I'm pretty confident that something will arise, though I'm going to be on edge and pondering all that time they've had to methodically hide and smuggle away any contraband that they'd been developing, ever since we started making the noises about our inevitable return to the trail. How many months now have they known that we'd end up back in the country, the only variable being how long they could stall us? How much could they have hidden or spirited away in that time?