Perhaps it's because I'm 4,000 miles away from Washington, DC, but as I was watching the coverage on CNN International and BBC World of the anti-war protests I couldn't help but think that these weren't REAL protesters. They were either 55-year-old anti-Vietnam protesters trying to re-live their youth; or they were youths trying to revive the days of the anti-Vietnam protests they've seen in the movies and on TV.
No one in their right mind wants to send young people into battle. War is (or at least should be) a last resort, not a first option. The notion that President Bush wants to go to war is beyond preposterous.
There is a reason for all the tough talk, all the troop deployments, all the movement of battle groups, and all the high-level diplomacy with regard to Iraq.
They are designed to PREVENT a war by constantly increasing the pressure - military, diplomatic, and psychological - not just on Saddam, but on his neighbors.
If President Bush were eager to go to war, we'd be in it by now.
While the protesters were claiming President Bush should do more, there are increasing signals that the other leaders in the region are now actively trying to work out a deal to get Saddam, his family, and his immediate supporters out of Iraq. The latest - first put forward by Time magazine on its website late last week was then picked up by the NY Times over the weekend which lead with this, in a piece by Patrick E. Tyler from Riyadh:
"Increasingly desperate to avoid war, Saudi Arabia is engaged in a campaign to incite Iraqi security forces to overthrow Saddam Hussein if he continues to refuse to step down or go into exile, officials here say."
This will likely be the subject - at least privately - of meetings to be held in Turkey the leaders of which have invited the leaders of Syria, Jordan, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Ankara this week for talks. According to newspaper reports, Syria has offered to host a preliminary meeting of regional foreign ministers to help prepare for the summit.
While the protesters were getting all the headlines, UN inspectors announced this weekend they had discovered of some 3,000 PAGES of documents squirreled away in an Iraqi physicist's home which, according to the BBC website, "appear to focus on laser enrichment - a way to modify uranium for use in nuclear weapons."
Yesterday afternoon it was announced four more warheads had been found, although it was unclear whether the inspectors found them or the Iraqis, knowing they were going to be found, 'fessed up.
And how do you suppose the inspectors happened upon those items? Same way they found the warheads last week: We told them where to go look.
And, as we suggested here last Friday, there will be a constant stream of this kind of guidance which not only helps make the case to our allies, but sends a strong, STRONG signal to Saddam that the CIA knows a good deal more about what he is hiding than he had hoped it did.
The right to protest in the US is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The protesters got to do what they wanted to do - gain huge amounts of press coverage - without, by the way, a single major Democratic Congressional leader in attendance. (Memo to protest organizers: NO ONE considers Jesse Jackson - who, by any fair reading of the public record, took the advice to "make love, not war" a bit far - to be a spokesman on the issues of war and peace.)
While "peaceable assemblies" were held in major cities around the world, here are two capital cities where protests against the local government would never be held: Baghdad and Pyongyang.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to a fairly boring Chapter 1 of the New Paris Travelogue, also links to the NY Times and BBC articles, and some photos you'll want to check out.
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