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 The Bush administration is looking to create a pretext to launch their one-sided slaughter in Iraq. Even before anyone had a chance to read the 12,000 pages of documentation on its weapons programs that Iraq submitted to the United Nations (UN), Bush already claiming that Iraq had "omitted" information from its report and was therefore "in breach" of the recent UN resolution. They are not likely to come up with a "smoking gun." But they have made it clear that they plan to go to war whether the inspections turn up evidence or not.
Leading Democrats like Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) are enthusiastically backing Bush. "We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction," said Graham, who-without a shred of proof-claimed that Saddam Hussein was preparing to launch terrorist attacks against the U.S. in the event of an invasion.
It's not surprising that the Democrats would jump on board the war bandwagon.
Killing Iraqis-through the first Gulf War and then devastating economic sanctions in the Clinton years-has been bipartisan politics in Washington for more than a decade.
This war drive won't be stopped by UN inspections-because it really isn't about whether or not Iraq possesses dangerous weapons. If we are worried about countries with weapons of mass destruction that are threatening to make unilateral military strikes to promote their interests, we should be pointing the finger not at Iraq, but at the U.S. government.
As conservative pundit Bob Novak said in a rare moment of candor on NBC's Meet the Press, the Bush administration "never wanted to have this inspection regime because what this is really about is change of regime in Iraq and change of the political outlines in the Middle East …Now, it's very difficult to find the proof of a nuclear development, to find that kind of evidence, and so it behooves-in order to make war-to say that they are hiding things." This war is about controlling Middle East oil, and about punishing any country that defies the Bush's administration interests.
Washington is mobilizing for war every day-we could be at war as early as some time late February - early March. So we can't sit back and wait for the troops to invade and the bombs to begin falling. Antiwar activists have to seize every opportunity to come together now-before an invasion happens-and build the movement to stop Washington's war.
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