Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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The Toothache Medicine Defense

Monday February 17, 2003

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Many years ago, as a young reporter in Marietta, Ohio, my beat included covering Municipal Court. I was always amazed at how defense attorneys could take a perfectly good prosecution case and cast so much doubt on it that the jury had a difficult time coming to a verdict.

The most famous of these adventures was the infamous "Toothache Medicine Defense" case. The city prosecutor had a lay-down case against a truck driver on the "four-lane" (which is what the Interstate Highway was called then) who had tested, something like point-sixty-seven on the breathalyzer. Point one-five was legally drunk at the time.

The defense attorney produced a small bottle of toothache medicine which, as luck would have it, contained alcohol. The defendant allowed as to how he had placed some of that there toothache medicine on his sore tooth not more than a few minutes before he was pulled over and tested.

As unlikely a story as that was, the jury bought it.

Marches against a war in Iraq were the subject of headlines on the front page of every newspaper in the nation - in the world - yesterday.

Let's make this clear: Protests are good things. They act as a safety valve which releases political pressure. Large - huge - protests release huge amounts of political energy.

It is also clear that the governments of Britain, Italy, Spain, and all the other European nations who oppose the Saddam Hussein regime - with the obvious exceptions of France and Germany - will not have their minds changed by these protests which were given an enormous boost by the report of Hans Blix to the UN Security Council on Friday.

Here's what I think happened: Blix gave a report a couple of weeks ago which, stripping aside the diplomatic niceties, was a damning indictment of Saddam Hussein's continued refusal to cooperate with the inspectors, much less actually disarm - which is what he is supposed to do.

Blix works for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who has been so careful to demonstrate he is not under the thumb of the United States that, to many minds, he has become actively adversarial to US interests and positions.

Annan counted noses in the Security Council and (this is from talking to long-time diplomat-watchers) told Blix that his report of two weeks ago gave the US too much ammunition, and to be more "balanced" this time.

Here's an example of Blix' "balance:"

Another matter - and one of great significance - is that many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for. To take an example, a document, which Iraq provided, suggested to us that some 1,000 tonnes of chemical agent were "unaccounted for". One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented.

If you were watching the coverage of Blix' report, the clicking sound you heard in the background was eyeballs spinning around in the heads of the simultaneous translators as they tried to parse that paragraph.

Later in his briefing, Blix spoke to Secretary of State Colin Powell's assertion that satellite imagery clearly showed the Iraqis moving prohibited materials in advance of a UN inspection team. Here's what Blix said about that:

The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection."

Those are not the words of an unbiased inspector. Those are the words of a defense attorney giving the jury an alternate theory.

Like the Toothache Medicine Defense, as unlikely a story as Blix presented, the Security Council bought it.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A short bio of Hans Blix, the text of his statement to the UN last week, a Mullfoto of the snowstorm at Mullings Central, and a pretty good catchy caption.

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