Friday, June 06, 2003
Because I'm curious about the Brits, a Guide to government in the U.K. Wherein I finally figure out what Prime Minister is...
</Aurelius> <!--11:15 AM-->Hmm...from June 4, 2003, United Press International: GOP senator: Iraq probe 'premature'. Democrats in the senate were starting to speak up about starting a formal investigation into Iraq's WMD Intelligence but it appears that those calls are being rebuked by Republican committee leaders in favor of reviewing CIA intelligence first.
</Aurelius> <!--10:16 AM-->I missed this tidbit, from June 1st, Bush Remarks Confirm Shift in Justifying War (washingtonpost.com). Wherein the Post reports that,
The president asserted that the discovery in Iraq of two trailers, with laboratory equipment but no pathogens aboard, was tantamount to a discovery of weapons.
"We found the weapons of mass destruction," Bush asserted in the Thursday interview, released Friday. "We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."
Tom Tomorrow points to an Associated Press article of March 17, 2003 that says, "Iraq also handed over videotapes of mobile biological weapons laboratories to inspectors. Iraq says the videos show that the laboratories do not violate UN resolutions." as a rebuttal.
While one must be skeptical of Iraq's claim that their laboratories are not in violation of U.N. resolutions, one must also be skeptical of the president's logic that discovery of said laboratories in the absence of any accompanying biological materials is equates to discovering banned weapons. At best it proves that they had intentions of producing biological weapons but intention itself doesn't support the argument that Iraq was a clear and present danger.
</Aurelius> <!--9:27 AM-->I was reading this article "Weapons of Mass Deception" on Salon.com and got to thinking about our political system of debate. In the opening paragraphs, the article describes Vice-President Cheney reassuring assembled legislators that the administration based the war in Iraq on credible evidence. Further into the article, it observes that Cheney was orating to "a room full of loyal Republican officials" which made me think this was a public relations move and not an open forum for debate about WMD evidence. But where would such a debate take place in our government?
I'm under the impression that in the British Parliamentary system, the Prime Minister must face parliamentary questioning every Wednesday. It can be contentious, it can be rude, but it serves to present a forum where government positions must be elucidated in public. This, at the very least, seems to engender some erudite politicians. On the other hand, the major public forum for issues in the U.S. seems to be in the media and that's proven to be not as rigorous a debate as we see in British politics. There are reports of the Democrats calling for inquiries into intelligence leading to the war but for some reason, it doesn't have the same potency as a public debate. One might argue this is a matter of giving the public what they want and apparently, the American public isn't interested in debating these sort of issues. My concern is whether our lawmakers are concerned about it and how that debate is being exercised in our government.
</Aurelius> <!--9:24 AM-->Thursday, June 05, 2003
Myths are precisely what give people the faith to undertake projects which rational calculations or comon sense would reject.
--Thomas L. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem