Mood:
don't askChristopher Hitchens has something to say about the New York Times' story from this past Sunday on the "looting" of Saddam's weapons facilities in the days after his fall:
According to the [...] story, Dr. Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, says that after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, "looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms."But we knew this, right? Hitchens asks:
My first question is this: How can it be that, on every page of every other edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categorically that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? And there can hardly be a comedy-club third-rater or MoveOn.org activist in the entire country who hasn't stated with sarcastic certainty that the whole WMD fuss was a way of lying the American people into war. So now what? Maybe we should have taken Saddam's propaganda seriously, when his newspaper proudly described Iraq's physicists as "our nuclear mujahideen."The threat of Ba'athist terrorism isn't over, of course. In fact, if these components and systems were moved across the border into Syria, the nightmare may have only begun.
Read Hitchens and the Times story both ---and be appalled. Be appalled at what passes for news on the goddamned TV.
(A big tip o' the hat to the indispensible Little Green Footballs.)