MORE REASONS TO REMOVE SADDAM For the past two weeks, the online journal Slate has been conducting an interesting dialogue among its contributors about the merits of invading Iraq, which THE SCRAPBOOK highly recommends. But there’s been one outstanding contribution, the Oct. 3 letter from New Yorker writer Jeffrey Goldberg, portions of which we reproduce below for our friends who prefer reading hard copy: “In 1995, the government of Saddam Hussein admitted to United Nations weapons inspectors that its scientists had weaponized a biological agent called aflatoxin. Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the now-defunct UNSCOM, told me earlier this year that the Iraqi admission was startling because aflatoxin has no possible battlefield use. Aflatoxin, which is made from fungi that occur in moldy grains, does only one thing well: It causes liver cancer. In fact, it induces it particularly well in children. Its effects are far from immediate. The joke among weapons inspectors is that aflatoxin would stop a lieutenant from making colonel, but it would not stop soldiers from advancing across a battlefield. “I quoted Duelfer, in an article that appeared in the New Yorker, saying that ‘we kept pressing the Iraqis to discuss the concept of use for aflatoxin.’ They never came up with an adequate explanation, he said. They did admit, however, that they had loaded aflatoxin into two warheads capable of being fitted onto Scud missiles. “Richard Spertzel, who was the chief biological weapons inspector for UNSCOM, told me that aflatoxin is ‘a devilish weapon. From a moral standpoint, aflatoxin is the cruelest weapon–it means watching children die slowly of liver cancer.’ “Spertzel went on to say that, to his knowledge, Iraq is the only country ever to weaponize aflatoxin. “In an advertisement that appeared in the New York Times on Tuesday [Oct. 1], a group of worthies called upon the American people to summon the courage to question the war plans of President Bush. The advertisement, which was sponsored by Common Cause, asks, in reference to the Saddam regime, ‘Of all the repugnant dictatorships, why this one?’ . . . “There are, of course, many repugnant dictators in the world; a dozen or so in the Middle East alone. But Saddam Hussein is a figure of singular repugnance, and singular danger. To review: There is no dictator in power anywhere in the world who has, so far in his career, invaded two neighboring countries; fired ballistic missiles at the civilians of two other neighboring countries; tried to have assassinated an ex-president of the United States; harbored al-Qaida fugitives…; attacked civilians with chemical weapons; attacked the soldiers of an enemy country with chemical weapons; conducted biological weapons experiments on human subjects; committed genocide; and then there is, of course, the matter of the weaponized aflatoxin, a tool of mass murder and nothing else. “I do not know how any thinking person could believe that Saddam Hussein is a run-of-the-mill dictator. No one else comes close–not the mullahs in Iran, not the Burmese SLORC, not the North Koreans–to matching his extraordinary and variegated record of malevolence. “Earlier this year, while traveling across northern Iraq, I interviewed more than 100 survivors of Saddam’s campaign of chemical genocide. I will not recite the statistics, or recount the horror stories here, except to say that I met enough barren and cancer-ridden women in Iraqi Kurdistan to last me several lifetimes. “So: Saddam Hussein is uniquely evil, the only ruler in power today–and the first one since Hitler–to commit chemical genocide. Is that enough of a reason to remove him from power? I would say yes, if ‘never again’ is in fact actually to mean ‘never again.’ “At a panel this past weekend on Iraq . . . Richard Holbrooke, who favors regime change, said the best practical argument for Saddam’s removal is the danger posed by his weapons programs. He is right, though the weapons argument, separated from Saddam’s real-life record of grotesque aggression, loses its urgency. Because Saddam is a man without any moral limits is why it is so important to keep nuclear weapons from his hands. . . . “The argument by opponents of invasion that Saddam poses no ‘imminent threat’ (they never actually define ‘imminent,’ of course) strikes me as particularly foolhardy. If you believe he is trying to acquire an atomic bomb, and if you believe that he is a monstrous person, than why would you possibly advocate waiting until the last possible second to disarm him? “After returning from Iraq, I dug out an old New York Times editorial, which I recommend people read in full. It was published on June 9, 1981, under the headline, ‘Israel’s Illusion.’ “‘Israel’s sneak attack on a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression,’ the editorial states. ‘Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago.’ “Israel absorbed the world’s hatred and scorn for its attack on the Osirak reactor in 1981. Today, it is accepted as fact by most arms-control experts that, had Israel not destroyed Osirak, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq would have been a nuclear power by 1990, when his forces pillaged their way across Kuwait. “The administration is planning today to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.” BARBRA SPELLS TROUBLE The best political fight of the fall is not Torricelli against the world, but the Drudge Report vs. Barbra Streisand. You can read all about it at Matt Drudge’s eponymous website. Or, better yet, visit Barbra’s “Truth Alert,” www.barbrastreisand.com/news_truth.html, which promises to rebut any falsehood that “has been written in print, spoken on radio, or aired on television about Ms. Streisand.” No rebuttals this week, though; only concessions. Yes, in her remarks to the Democratic National Gala, Babs was suckered into reading a fake Shakespeare quote that has been circulating on anti-Bush websites for months. And yes, her office did send a jejune memo full of misspellings to Dick “Gebhart.” But, she says, it was dictated. The truth? “Barbra Streisand is a great speller, meticulous in her written communications!” Modest, too. NOT SO CIVIL WAR Snackers in Baltimore who went to the 7-Eleven on Sept. 26 needn’t have bothered. They could have gone to the NAACP-sponsored Bob Ehrlich-Kathleen Kennedy Townsend gubernatorial debate, where supporters of Townsend passed around Oreo cookies. These were distributed not to be hospitable, but as a racial insult directed at Ehrlich’s running mate Michael Steele. (Black on the outside, white on the inside–get it?) Some of Townsend’s supporters also booed Ehrlich’s family, booed Ehrlich during his opening remarks, keyed his car, and plastered it with Townsend campaign stickers. In a profile of Townsend two months ago, Matt Labash reported that Ehrlich’s camp feared race-baiting from the Townsend campaign. “He must have something to worry about,” she said then. “I’ll just say there’s plenty in his record for anyone to explore.” Looks like Ehrlich was right to worry. What, exactly, do Oreo cookies have to do with exploring the candidate’s record? JUST THOUGHT YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW “Peter Jennings’ coffee-table book ‘In Search of America’ may turn out to be a publishing disaster for Disney-owned Hyperion Books, which shipped a massive 725,000 copies to bookstores last month. In another apparent synergy bust, the book, priced at a whopping $50, has failed to find a significant number of buyers despite being promoted with a five-part miniseries hosted by Jennings last month. The miniseries also failed to attract viewers, producing ratings far below those for the regular ABC programs it preempted (most of which were already low).”
–reported by IMDB.com, Movie and TV News, Oct. 3 TASTELESS HEADLINE OF THE YEAR “5 SHOOTING VICTIMS REFLECT MONTGOMERY’S GROWING DIVERSITY” –Washington Post, Page A1, Oct. 4
