Where Did We Go Wrong? Today's top story, you know, is that rape charges were dropped against Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant in Eagle, Colorado. That's a pretty penny thrown away. The dismissal, without the possibility of charges being filed again, came after the victim/witness/plaintiff/protagonist refused to cooperate any further. The media appreciates the bone, and the citizens of Eagle get to pay for it all. But they're rich; they got a big tax break this year. Lost in that haze, and overshadowed by the fake Republican convention (where moderates are allowed to speak, just not to govern), is a tidbit of news about Iran. The Bush administration says there is a classified document at the International Atomic Energy Agency indicating that Iran is about to convert 37 tons of yellow-cake uranium into 220 pounds of fissile material, enough to make four nuclear bombs. This, then is probably the substance of the documents allegedly passed over to Israel by members of the Department of Defense. Douglas Feith's name came up a few times as being in this pseudo-espionage loop. He's only the Number Three guy at the Pentagon, behind Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Apparently, if we consider the country to which Bush officials covertly smuggle our deepest secrets to be "friendly", it's not spying, but rather only revealing classified material. No big deal. The unofficial Nucular Proliferation Czar, John Bolton, says the administration intends to press the U.N. "to join with us in this effort to deal with the Iranian threat to international peace and security." That sounds sincere, diplomatically speaking, but there are just a couple of problems with it. For starters, Bush has already shown that any overtures for international cooperation are pure window dressing. Also, our case is not exactly bolstered by the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So it is not the fast-fading Colin Powell who addresses this rather grave situation, but one of his employees, a fellow named Tom Casey. He describes the IAEA report as one that "continues to document the fact that through the past 18 years Iran has amassed a record of deception and denial about its nuclear activities." Deception and denial, no kidding – where have we heard that before? Unlike with Saddam Hussein, there is a general consensus that Iran presents a serious military obstacle. It has a fairly wicked missile system, a much stronger army than Iraq's, and a bit of an Air Force (much of it stashed there by Saddam in the first Gulf War). Victory would certainly be achievable, but costly, from an on-paper standpoint. More than one conservative pundit has trumpeted that having a sizable military force in place in Iraq should be viewed as a good thing – a deterrent. But about Saddam they hollered that deterrence doesn't work, and they may be right about that. Iran is also a much stickier subject diplomatically, as Russia has played quite a hand in establishing what capabilities are in Iran's possession. So has China. Oil-rich Iran is a cash cow for those countries, one of which has historically been an ideological foe of the United States, the other of which remains so. Iraq, meanwhile, isn't improving a whole lot. We are plagued with both Sunnis conducting a brutal insurgency and swollen unrest among the Shiite community. Bush deliberately understates the nature of the problem when he admits to "miscalculations" made by his administration. He won't mention it, but he means it was a mistake to allow over 300,000 Iraqi military personnel to seep into the populace. But what else could he do? We won too quickly, that's the problem. The Shiites, the ones we supposedly liberated, have been giving us fits since the statues came down. As the majority faction, they don't seem to cotton to our highbrow expectations of a pro-Western democracy. They really want to be like their fellow Shiites over in Iran, the country we just called a "threat to international peace and security". Invading or attacking Iran right now, or in the near future, would be difficult for a military force that is already busy keeping a lid on Iraqi Shiites, and would likely instigate a full-scale revolt. Had we not wasted the past 18 months and $130 billion in Iraq, which barely even posed a threat to its own peace and security, we might be in a much better position to deal with Iran. We were already in Afghanistan, basically on Iran's back porch. Where did the Bush administration go wrong? And what do you do with an employee who makes such a costly mistake? Paul Heller 09/02/04 << back to the archives
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