Bernard Hernri-Levy's argument that Iraq was already checkmated and impotent
before the war, seem pretty sound. Of course it was the US and Britain who
were doing the checkmating afaik, and not anybody else, and there is the

I'm still scratching my head over Saddam's treatment of the weapons
inspectors. If he had simply cooperated with them, and especially if
he hadn't dumped that absurd multi-million-page compliance document on
the UN, the U.S. would have found it impossible to make the case for
invasion.

Again, Time magazine and all the rest can trust the short memories of
the public to forget all that stone-walling.

argument that the situation was ultimately untenable, UN sanctions would be
lifted, the no-fly zones would go away, that Saddam's successor might be even
worse and have vast and dangerous ambitions. Who knows?

There is still the point that we made the point: it's not safe to
knock over the World Trade Center. Further, it's not safe to do
business with Bin Laden.

Again--short memories! That Al Qaeda is for all practical purposes
impotent will be overlooked. It's like the fall of the Soviet empire
in 1990. That it fell is simply regarded as proof that it never was a
threat.

Don't worry, Art! They'll rewrite the history of WWII as well, the
minute the last vet is gone.

The main thing that concerns me now, the war being an accomplished fact,
however you felt about it, is the apparent poor and biased reporting coming out
of Iraq, reporting that does not jibe at all with the stories I hear from the
people who were and are actually there now.
Even the Brookings Institution (no member of the vast right wing conspiracy
they) has had some kind things to say about the current situation there.
Click the link:

http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20030930.htm

to go to a "what I did on my vacation" report (nothing deep) from a Brookings
senior fellow on his trip to Iraq last week. We are not in the deep do-do, the
media insists we are.

Thanks for the pointer, Chris.
all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

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