Stupefying stupidity
I do not write about the Iraq situation, leaving it to others to comment. The following, from "Tom Daschle's Fantasy World" by Stephen Hayes, published in the Weekly Standard, is simply too astonishing to let pass. To rip off a phrase from an old National Lampoon piece, it's so incredibly incredible that you wouldn't believe it:
The logic behind George W. Bush's argument for disarming Saddam is simple: After the Gulf War, Saddam agreed to disarm. He didn't live up to that agreement. For the seven years that United Nations weapons inspectors were in his country, he not only concealed his existing weapons of mass destruction arsenal, he continued to develop it. When he kicked the inspectors out of the country in late 1998, the United Nations reported that Saddam had not accounted for vast majority of these weapons.
* * *
The inescapable conclusion, of course, is that Saddam has retained these prohibited weapons.
To believe otherwise requires a curious set of propositions: (1) Yes, Saddam Hussein retained and developed weapons from 1991-1998, while inspectors where in Iraq. (2) Once the inspectors left Iraq, between 1999-2002, he disarmed unilaterally. And (3) for whatever reason, Saddam chose not to notify the United Nations of this disarmament so that the sanctions crippling Iraq's economy would be kept in place.
That supposition, of course, would seem absurd--but not to Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, who today left open the possibility that Saddam Hussein has no weapons of mass destruction because he got rid of them on his own:
. . . "I don't think the administration has presented adequate, convincing evidence to say that [Iraq] can produce weapons to share with terrorist," he said.
Confused, I asked Daschle to clarify: "You don't think Saddam disarmed unilaterally, do you?"
"We don't have any concrete evidence that he has not," Daschle replied. "And that's the issue."
It is interesting to see a political columnist who has mastered the Socratic logical art of the reductio ad absurdum, and has hung the hapless Daschle with it.
5:32:52 PM 
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