Antiwarriorology

(above: Mirror-Universe Spock, Bizzaro Superman)

Gadzooks. Trying to decipher the logic of the liberal/Democratic, Clinton-loving/ Bush-hating, "antiwar" mind is like trying to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics with a Chinese dictionary: You look at one set of words, then the other, scratch your head and squint, then labor in vain to find relations or consistent patterns until your eyes begin to spin and you feel compelled to place a horizontal forefinger against your lips, rapidly shake it up and down, and hum.

It's like they live in the negative world of Star Trek's mirror universe, or the upside-down one of Bizarro Superman.

There the resilient American economy was, bouncing back and having already begun to aggressively expand in the fall of '04, and there's lefty antiwar/warrior (huh?) Presidential-Candidate Senator John Kerry characterizing it as the "Worst Economy Since The Great Depression."

And, just last week, Republicus trumpets one fine recovery and continuing expansion and the 4.8 unemployment rate (hey, that rhymes) and an anonymous, Bush-hating guest explains how this is actually the worst expansion in the past half-century, and nothing to trumpet for.

And then there's the belligerent Antiwarrior element who cook up, inflate, and exaggerate (hey, that rhymes too; where's Jesse Jackson?) High Crimes and Misdemeanors to justify regime change here and draw up plans and concoct propaganda strategems and alarm the populace that the President and his minions are brutes and terrorists who are a threat to the American people, projecting I mean alleging that the president cooked up, inflated, and exaggerated the high crimes and misdemeanors of Saddam Hussein to justify regime change there by drawing up plans and propaganda strategems to alarm the populace that he was a brute and terrorist and a threat to the American people.

(That's right, place a horizontal forefinger against your lips, rapidly shake it up and down, and hum.)

Okay, Republicus got the part about them getting angry at President Bush because they felt like he tricked them into supporting the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses-- i.e. Saddam's presumed possession and/or pursuit of WMD-- but what Republicus doesn't get is why, then, do they exempt the hee-hawing former-President Clinton from their calumnious wrath since, less than five years before, he justified his own bombing of Iraq in his own Shock & Awe spectacle called Operation Desert Fox on the same grounds:

Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq.

They are joined by British forces.

Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

[...]

Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.

Commencement of Operation Desert Fox, December 16, 1998

The spectre of "nuclear arms" was conjured in President Bush's own reference to the "nucular" threat when he uttered the infamous "Sixteen Words" of the January 2003 State Of The Union address, which referred to a tip from British Intelligence (who were tipped by French agents who in turn had been tipped off by Italian ones) that, in February of 1999, an Iraqi official (who was stationed in Italy at a Vatican post, which was related to why PJPII came out against the war) had gone to Niger to--presumably-- talk and *wink-wink* about new uranium purchases.

Iraq had just been pummeled by Operation Desert Fox, but it would be a reasonable presumption, based on the observation of the well-demonstrated character of Saddam Hussein, that the pummeling would compel him not to learn his lesson and stop playing with matches, but, infuriated, to immediately start looking around for a flame-thrower once the pummeling stopped.

That would be the responsible presumption in a post-9/11 world.

Iran's defiance of the international community's wishes are similar in character to Baathist Iraq's, that is, they don't care, and neither did Saddam.

Saddam had gotten uranium before, in 1981, compelling Israel to bomb the reactor that same year.

He got it from Niger.

The tip from British Intelligence that an Iraqi official had gone to Niger is documented fact, and the presumption that the official was sent by Saddam to sniff around there for uranium yellow-cake--one of diverse and sundry examples about Saddam's clandestine pursuit of WMD itemized in the SOTU-- was a justified one.

The president said: "Here's what we heard from British Intelligence," and gave a sixteen-worded non-descript summary of the report (among a list of plenty more).

However, before the SOTU but during the obvious build-up to war, CIA staffer Valeri Plame gets her husband--Joe Wilson IV-- an assignment to Niger to find out what's up with that (i.e. Iraq and uranium yellow cake from Niger) so as to vet it for inclusion in the SOTU.

Wilson claims that he came back and reported that no, the Nigerans had no uranium deal with Iraq (as if they'd tell him if they did), but British Intelligence stood--and still stands-- behind their belief that it was a run for yellow cake, so the President decided to apprise the American people of that in the SOTU, anyway, to bolster the long-listed rationales for armed conflict even more.

Wilson freaks out that his personal assessment was rendered irrelevant, and tattletales to all of the Bush-hating, antiwar outfits that the president lied in the SOTU because he--Joe Wilson IV--had submitted a report that concluded that the intelligence was bunk.

Zoinks! The senate report on the CIA's intelligence gathering concluded that Wilson's own report strengthened--not weakened--the case that Saddam was looking for yellow cake in Niger!

Nevertheless, Wilson lying about the president lying caused the magpies to jerk upright and raise a cacophonic hubbub and so began the "Misleader-In-Chief!" the "Bush-Lied-&-Kids-Died!" the "Liar-Liar-Pants-On-Fire!" and "The Lying Liars And The Lies They Lie About!" childish insanity that raised a collective snickering and "Allah Akbars!" in terrorist enclaves the world over.

Meanwhile, Wilson also lied about who got him the assignment to Niger. He said it was the vice president, when it was really his own wife, so the vice president's men saw fit to set the record straight by leaking that it was an inside CIA job, as arranged by his CIA-employed wife, Valerie Plame (who was not named).

The magpies CAW-CAWED "TREASON!" because Northern Virginia's own Super-Duper-Secret-Sleuth Valerie Plame had her Top-Secret cover blown and her surveillance missions to Gucci, Tiffany's, and suburban N.VA. cocktail parties and baby-showers dangerously compromised.

All of that, of course, dominated years of left-wing punditry and "antiwar" blogosophies which took great pains--ad nauseum-- to explain why the president's "Sixteen Words" in the SOTU as well as the "Treasonous" outing of America's own James Bond (i.e. Valerie Plame) are an impeachable offense worthy of regime change here (while Saddam Hussein's Sixteen Violations of UN Resolutions on the heels of 9/11 did not merit regime change there-- after over a decade of spiteful defiance on his part, and appeasement on ours).

Meanwhile, mum on Clinton's spectacular but cosmetic bombing of Iraq on the justification of WMD capabilities by referring to the same intelligence apparatus.

And mum on the recent report that Saddam's own generals assumed--and counted on--the availabilty of WMD to keep an angry Uncle Sam at bay.

And mum on the self-evident terrorist element in Iraq and the established link between Saddam and Al Qaeda after all.

And complete obliviousness (if not actual mindfulness) of their own treasonous aiding and abetting of the enemy in a war wherein we must fight anti-American propaganda as much as armed combatants.

The dangerous liar who deserved regime change was Saddam Hussein, people, but to begin to understand the logic and world-view of the Clinton-loving, Bush-hating "antiwar" liberal mind, all you have to do is invert everything by turning the tables and everything upside down:

It's not the 16 violations of UN Resolutions and Saddam Hussein, no, but "The Sixteen Words!" and George W. Bush (and "Valerie Plame!" and "Abu Ghraib!" and "Gitmo!" and blah-blah-blah!) which should compel every good American patriot to oust this "criminal" administration (and give the liberal Democrats a chance to "Take Back" the "America We Remember!").

Meanwhile: "War? What war? The only one worth fighting is the Culture War against the anglo-Christo-fascist-lying-imperialists who hijacked the federal government and are the world's greatest terrorists!"

Republicus is not making this stuff up.

Anyway, with all of that being said--and magnanimously granting the lefty, unhinged, Bush-hating mind with some logic and consistency in principle-- it stands to reason that one could assume that if Iraq did, in fact, make a deal with Niger for uranium transactions (ignoring all other intelligence about unaccounted for WMD stockpiles), and if David Kay just happened to fall through a trap-door while flashlighting his way around a darkened, abandoned factory and suddenly found himself in a brightly-lit, underground complex full of thousands of spinning centrifuges cooking uranium, then the "antiwar" Bush-haters would assent to the sagacity of the invasion, apologize, and shaddup, would they not?

Not.

Iran has just the other day announced and bragged about its success in enriching uranium and its intention to keep enriching while warning of dread consequences if the centrifuges were attacked and destroyed.

That was in the face of international objections to its nuclear ambitions, and spiteful of the UN's finger-wagging against them.

It was a brazenly unilateral move.

"What?" the lefty, Clinton-loving "antiwar" Bush-haters would be expected to gasp collectively, since they spent how many years of vehement venting about the international coalition's "unilateral" invasion of Iraq, which spited the desires of the corrupt, pocket-pooling Saddamites on the UN councils and European allies like France and Germany alike?

Wasn't that "unilateralism" itself a cause to villainize President Bush?

Of course it was. Republicus read many writs and manifestos complaining about Bush's thumbing his nose at the civilized world and alienating everyone by his unilateral rejection of the Kyoto Treaty and his "unilateral" attack on Saddam.

But it's okay if Mahmout does it!

And weren't the "lies" about Iraq's nuclear capabilities and ambitions the main reason--along with the "lie" about Iraq's relations to Islamic terrorism-- why we shouldn't have attacked Iraq, which logically means that if Iraq did have the capabilities, and did have a working nexus with organized terrorism, then--but only then--would an attack have been justified?

Certainly, if the gripes and conniptions are to make any sense at all.

And yet, it is now okay for Iran-- which has an Islamic fundamentalist regime ostentatiously hostile to the United States, has a working nexus with uber-terrorist groups like Hizbollah, and has expressed an explicit desire to annihilate a U.S. ally-- to possess enriched uranium?

And President Bush is, once again, accused of mongering for war for the same reasons that indeed would have justified an attack on Iraq if the reasons were true, but now that they are in regards to Iran, they are insufficient, after all, and Bush is just still being a war-mongering imperialist ready to shed American blood for the sole sake of a foreign country (i.e. Israel) while simultaneously trying to corner the petroleum market, or monetarily help his buddies in the military industrial complex, or some such mischaracterization?

Why does Republicus feel like Dr. McCoy in the top pic being mind-wormed by mirror Mr. Spock everytime he listens to the bizzaro arguments of the Bush-hating, "antiwar" crowd?