Coming full-circle

Last week Iraqi insurgents detonated three chlorine dirty bombs in densely populated areas, killing eight and sickening as many as 350 people. \nWhen properly diluted in water, chlorine is used in swimming pools to kill mold and bacteria with relatively little harm to humans. However, the green, distinctly odorous gas can be fatal when inhaled or ingested in moderate concentrations. \nThe insurgents built or otherwise obtained trucks rigged with tanks of the noxious gas and explosives, thus bringing America’s 30-year affair with Iraq full circle.\nThough officially neutral, in the 1980s the Reagan administration began secretly supporting Iraq in its war against Iran, believing that an Iranian victory could endanger American interests, despite confirmed intelligence that Iraq was using chemical and biological weapons against the Iranians and Kurds. The famous picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein was taken in 1983. When the Gulf War broke out seven years later American and British forces pushed the Iraqi army out of Kuwait and destroyed the majority of Iraq’s weapons caches; a strict embargo and close surveillance prevented Iraq from rebuilding.\nRegardless, in 2003 the second Bush administration considered it a moral imperative to disarm whatever leftover stockpiles of biological and chemical agents, uranium from Africa, super dangerous aluminum tubing, or RVs that doubled as weapons factories, Iraq might be hiding in the desert.\nLong story short, there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction – there were barely any weapons at all for the matter. Bush, unperturbed by the failure to turn up neither weapons, nor terrorists, nor a functioning oil well, nevertheless declared that America had vanquished evil, and once again made the world safe for children. Iraq had been purged of weapons of mass destruction, and an unpredictable despot had been deposed. The idea that the WMD, and by extension the threat to America, had been effectively neutralized 13 years prior was erroneous. That was back when failing to prevent the looting seemed like a serious lack of judgment.\nToday the administration continues to insist that the strategic carpet-bombing of Iraq in 2003 has somehow created a more stable environment, or at least pacified some of the anti-American sentiment. The opposite could not be truer: $400 billion and four years of a hapless occupation have caused the deaths of some 60,000 Iraqi civilians and further agitated the centuries old conflict between Sunnis and Shia. That is to say nothing of the radical Baathists and members of al-Qaida who have demonstrated their ability and willingness to employ chemical warfare against innocent populations. \nThe great irony of course is not simply that the mad dash into Baghdad led by Bush and his horde of neocon marauders both failed to eliminate the threat of WMD and encouraged terrorists to search out chemical weapons, but that continuing to enforce the military and economic sanctions as they had been imposed after the first Gulf War would have prevented Iraq from further disrupting delicate Middle East politics.