Jun. 10, 2003 - 22:55 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Is It News ?

Thunder and lightening, streamers of fear, apprehension of disaster far above 9-11, all of the above and more have been bruited about and thrown out for ages.

Today a sort of ho-hum article showed up in the back pages of our newspaper, by Dafina Linzer of the Associated Press, headlined Weapons hunters run out of targets.

"Baghdad, Iraq -- U.S. military units assigned to track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting time off or being assigned to other duties."

"After nearly three months of fruitless searches, weapons hunters say they are now waiting for a large team of Pentagon intelligence experts to take over the effort, relying more on leads from interviews and documents."

So now after the crime scene has been muddled with extraneous footprints, shells, bombs and uproar, it appears that "experts" are being brought to the scene to try to figure out what if anything exists to prove the "WMD" theory. The attempts to say, "Well, he had 'em," have degenerated into, "Well he had a program," or "That's what intelligence told us, we suspect him of evil thoughts toward us."

It appears to me that the words "intelligence," "experts" and words of that sort are all oxymorons when used to explain or hope to uncover the realities of things. Perhaps the realities of things have already been reported by savvy operatives and dismissed as unimportant at the time intelligence reported facts.

We didn't finish "It" in Korea, we didn't finish "It" in Nam, and obviously we didn't finish "It" in the First Gulf War -- whatever "IT" is. Expending many lives, much natural resources, and more dollars than anyone can really visualize. Doing "IT" in a seemingly alcoholic excercise of doing the same things over and over while expecting different results each time.

In an article by a local Rocky Mountain News today reporter Mike Littwin in his column makes a point or two, "as it turns out, the Iraqi war was fought, in part, to uncover the reasons for going to war. They found the atrocities. They're still searching for the weapons, although, according to the latest reports, the current teams, soon to be replaced, are running out of places to look." Mike clarifies his thinking, "I'm not in the WMD-denial camp. I think they'll find something eventually -- either weapons or the means to make them. I'd be surprised though, if they were�as dangerous as we've been told. Or are you ready to accept that those two trailers were the proof everyone was looking for ?" Further on in his article he discusses a thing that hits home as far as I am concerned, "Maybe the most embarrassing revelation came from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who told Vanity Fair that the administration settled on the WMD ratonale because "it was the one reason everyone could agree on.

Mike Littwin goes on to quote a few things said by Bush: "Intelligence gathered by this and other goverments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of most lethal weapons ever devised."

Or, "We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents."

Or, "Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more."

In a joking way, after hearing more blather on the TV I said to Heather, "Yeah, George gonna find WMD, even if we have to manufacture them here and ship 'em over." That said as a joke, but I wonder, am I totally paranoid when things like that come out of my head ?

So going back to the Weapons hunters running out of targets, is that news, really, Is It News ? . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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