While it’s clear that Dubya & Co. are disingenuous about allowing the U.N. inspections process to work (“We’ve got evidence, you just can’t see it,” they say), we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that a search that doesn’t turn up anything in Iraq will keep the dogs of war at bay.

Dubya never wanted inspections, doubts they’ll work, and claims to have evidence of at least attempts to accumulate or build weapons of mass destruction. That might be a bluff, but Dubya seems pretty damn convinced that Saddam’s up to no good. I doubt that’s all wishful thinking on his part. And it doesn’t matter, since it seems so many politicians, pundits and the public at large seems willing to accept Dubya’s word that he’s got the goods on Saddam.

In which case, the inspections process has been a waste of time. Yeah, if it turns out there’s no smoking gun it hurts Dubya’s cause a little bit, but all along the administration has asked Iraq to prove a negative. Just because we can’t find the weapons doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Which brings us full circle to the original question: Is Saddam a threat? Moreover, is he the primary threat to U.S. national security? The debate needs to be shifted away from this hocus-pocus inspections game to some contemplation over how well containment has worked, how well deterrence has worked, and perhaps most effective rhetorically, how much we are still at risk from Islamic extremist terrorists around the globe who are still hell-bent on killing as many Americans as they can.

The U.N. inspections are a sideshow. Nothing that results from them will keep us out of war. Also posted to Stand Down.

Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh has Dubya down cold.

Brutal.

Yes, it’s true!

According to an editorial in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, “Last year alone, of the 570 slayings in which police determined motives, 260 were tied to gangs, narcotics or narcotics turf disputes.” That’s almost half of the murders cops have pinned down a motive for.

These murders are a direct result of the illegal drug trade in Chicago. There might be a lot of ugly things about legally available hard drugs, but will there be anything as ugly as those 260 lives that were lost last year. Or that are lost every year, in every major metropolitan area in this country?

The answer, of course, is more vigorous prosecution of this war on drugs and gangs, says the Tribune editorial.

Hooray for stupidity!

Dubya & Co. think what the world needs now is a war, sweet war, but empires ain’t what they used to be, the Cato Institute’s Ivan Eland says. He writes:

The strategy of empire is likely to overstretch and bleed America’s economy and its military and federal budgets, and the overextension could hasten the decline of the United States as a superpower, as it did the Soviet Union and Great Britain. The strategy could also have the opposite effect from what its proponents claim it would have; that is, it would alarm other nations and peoples and thus provoke counter-balancing behavior and create incentives for other nations to acquire weapons of mass destruction as an insurance policy against American military might.

See his full analysis here. Also posted to Stand Down.

The new terrorism insurance bill Dubya signed will ensure that the feds take on the risks that insurance companies think are too high. Want to build a huge skyscraper that will prove a tempting target for terrorists? “Go for it,” says the new law.
By leaving this in private hands, real estate developers and insurers would have a profit incentive to be creative and design buildings that actually reduce the risk of terrorist attacks. So much for that. That “giant sucking sound” you hear, to quote Ross Perot, is your tax dollars going to pay off big insurance companies the next time there’s a major terrorist attack.

The Miss World riots are all the media’s fault, says Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.