Hide and seek

And what if there's nothing being hidden? Then there is no point in seeking. Reuters, January 13:

The U.S. force that scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction - cited by President Bush as justification for war - has abandoned its long and fruitless hunt, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. ...

Bush and other U.S. officials cited the grave threat posed by Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and Baghdad's efforts to acquire a nuclear arms capability as a central justification for the March 2003 invasion. No such weapons have been found.

Of course, you've heard all about that, so I won't waste your time repeating what you already know and links you've already visited.

But did you hear this part? It's from the Guardian (UK), as it says that not only has the search been abandoned, it's been given up so completely that investigators

left Iraq with an appeal to the Pentagon for the release of several Iraqi scientists still being questioned....

[T]he ISG had made "several pleas" to the Pentagon to release the Iraqi scientists, who have been held for nearly two years and who have been interviewed extensively.

The scientists include General Amir al-Saadi, who negotiated with UN inspectors on behalf of the Saddam regime; Rihab Taha, a biologist also known as Dr Germ; her husband, Amir Rashid, a former oil minister; and Huda Amash, a biologist nicknamed Mrs Anthrax by UN inspectors.

These scientists were being held supposedly for what they could reveal about the mythical weapons of mass destruction. Even though it has become officially undeniable that there is nothing - no weapons, no programs - for them to have any information about, they are still being held, even after several pleas from the Iraq Survey Group. Why?

And speaking of why, why were these comments, reported by the BBC, nowhere to be found in US media accounts?

Former US inspector David Kay told the BBC's Radio 4 PM programme this was the expected outcome:

"You cannot believe how hard it is to motivate people in the field who know that all they are doing is going through busy work motions because they themselves know there are no weapons there.

"I faced that over a year ago with a team that essentially knew that we were right when we said they were no weapons." ...

Former head of UN weapons inspections Hans Blix also said there was no surprise in the announcement.

"We have believed that there weren't any weapons since around May or June 2003. First came David Kay in September 2003 [who said] that he hadn't found any weapons and that was a big sensation - but he thought that there were programmes still," he told the BBC.

"But then came Duelfer last November [who] said that he hadn't seen any programmes, but maybe Saddam would have intended to restart the programme, and there is no evidence of that.

Mr Blix said he assumed it would be natural for the United States to now report their finding to the UN Security Council "because the US took the inspections out of the hands of the UN to undertake it themselves".

Uh-huh. How do you say "fat chance" in Swedish?

The White House, meanwhile, continued to stare directly ahead like a bratty child who is convinced that so long as they don't actually look at you, they don't have to hear anything you say to them. In an interview with Barbara Walters, Bush said

he has no regrets about his administration's decision to wage war in Iraq, despite inspectors' failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in the country - the chief rationale for the March 2003 invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime. ...

"I felt like we'd find weapons of mass destruction - like many here in the United States, many around the world. The United Nations thought he had weapons of mass destruction," Bush told Walters. "Saddam was dangerous and the world is safer without him in power. ... And he no longer has the capacity to reconstitute a weapons program. ... Yes, it's worth it."

But - but - but - the supposed huge and growing arsenal of Iraqi WMDs was, we were told, the source of the threat! That was what the claims of threat were based on! No WMDs, no threat! And "no longer has the capacity?" He didn't before! Remember, the report of chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer concluded that Saddam Hussein had destroyed his weapons 10 years earlier, that his capacity of build new ones had been in decline for years, and that he had "no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD." He may have dreamed about it, but he lacked the facilities, the materials, and the plans.

But no matter, just like always, the Shrub gang just comes up with a new excuse for the same actions. Whatever they can sell to a sufficient number of sufficiently gullible people. White House media flack Scat ("I really am full of it") McClellan called Wednesday's announcement of the end of the search "nothing new" and went on to argue with a straight face the latest administration excuse for invasion, destruction, and the unleashing of civil war. The International Herald Tribune for Thursday ran down the highlights of the process.

As the banned-weapons argument dimmed, Bush has argued instead that Saddam was a tyrant responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and others; that the war was necessary to stop terrorists; and, more recently, that the invasion would move Iraq, and then other repressive regimes, toward democracy.

"The president knows that by advancing freedom in a dangerous region, we are making the world a safer place," McClellan said.

Somehow, I seriously wonder just how many people in Iraq do, and how many don't, think of what they're experiencing as "freedom."