“Saddam acquiring technology for ‘long-range supergun'”
-The Independent (UK), Oct. 10
“Pentagon plans smallpox shots for up to 500,000”
-The New York Times, Oct. 12
“Iraq vows to respond quickly if attacked”
-The Washington Post, Oct. 12
As the probability of military action against Iraq becomes more definite and immediate, information is starting to flow freely from the lips of U.S., U.N., and Iraqi officials.
According to a New York Times report, half a million US troops will be inoculated with the small pox vaccine upon its expected licensing in November. This is to guard the soldiers against potential biological warfare when they go into Iraq.
According to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Iraq may have a stockpile of biological weapon munitions, including smallpox. The CNS also suggest that many different possibilities in the way of weapons of mass destruction could be built by the Iraqis with materials purchased on the black market.
Perhaps these black market materials are being purchased to create a “supergun” that could fire biological, chemical, and even nuclear weapons long-range, as suggested by German prosecutors and reported in the United Kingdom’s The Independent.
If, or maybe more accurately, when the United States attacks Iraq, Iraq is sure to retaliate. Iraq’s deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz said that Iraq would be able to respond to a US attack within an hour, according to the Washington Post.
However, Aziz claimed that “Iraq is not a threat to anyone — not neighboring countries, not America. Bush wants complete hegemony over the region.” With protests against military action against Iraq happening all over the United States, could Aziz have a point?
The simplest explanation of the seeming immediate need for the United States to wage war on Iraq again is citing Bush’s description of the War on Terrorism. He gave that speech nearly a year ago declaring that countries were either for us or against us. He said that countries that harbor terrorists or helped out the terrorists or terrorist organizations would effectively be on the US’s shit list. So, Iraq is just on the shit list.
There were speculations right after Sept. 11 about the extent of Iraq’s involvement, as well as with the Anthrax, among other things. Saddam Hussein’s son tried to enroll in a Florida flight school not long ago.
People are sitting in the campus center obliviously watching reruns of britcoms on T.V.
We are all very busy people with intricate lives and myriad responsibilities.
We are going to go to war. The Beltway Sniper has killed a bunch of people. Does anyone know? When you walk by a newspaper vending machine, do you look at the cover?
So much can change in a single day. Sept. 10 last year everything was normal, average, even mundane. 24 hours later everything was different and we could not get enough reason why. We held our loved ones and sat riveted to the glowing box of images of collapsing buildings and the possibility of new information.
For about a week and a half, we were all news junkies. We went about our daily lives like the President urged us to do, but at the same time all we could talk about was what had happened, and if anyone had news on the situation.
Our interest, as a whole, petered out after that. The Anthrax story was interesting initially, but it got old. What happened that news was no longer important? Perhaps the news itself needs to affect us personally and immediately to hold our attention. After all, words like “impending” and “passed a resolution” don’t really mean anything.
There are headlines like the ones at the top of this column every day. Superguns and small pox and retaliation.
We have to pay attention.