Right Axis. Wrong Evil.
July 22, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON - The capital has plunged into satire.
There's the bizarre investigation of Sandy Burglar, as the
respected former national security adviser has now been
dubbed, pulling a Fawn Hall and smuggling stuff out of the
National Archives in his fine washables.
And just when you thought the Bush foreign policy couldn't
sound more chuckleheaded, revelations in the 9/11
commission report being released today elevated the Bush
doctrine to an Ali G skit.
The most astute prophet of the administration's Middle East
muddle is Sacha Baron Cohen, the hilarious British comedian
whose Ali G character is an uninformed gangsta rapper
interviewing unwitting V.I.P.'s.
This Sunday, HBO will run Ali G's interview with Pat
Buchanan, in which he presses the broadcaster about why no
"B.L.T.'s" were found in Iraq. Mr. Buchanan plays along,
but it's not clear if he actually thinks there were
B.L.T.'s in Saddam's arsenal. (Mr. Cohen speculated in The
Times later that Mr. Buchanan might have thought it was
argot for "ballistic long-range-trajectory missiles.")
Last year, Ali G asked James Baker III, the Bush I
secretary of state, if it was wise for Iraq and Iran to
have such similar names. "Isn't there a real danger," the
faux rapper wondered, "that someone give a message over the
radio to one of them fighter pilots, saying 'Bomb Ira-' and
the geezer doesn't heard it properly" and bombs the wrong
one?
"No danger," Mr. Baker replied.
Well, as it turns out, the United States did bomb the wrong
Ira-.
President Bush says he's now investigating Qaeda-Iran ties,
and whether Iran helped the 9/11 hijackers.
Whoops. Right axis. Wrong evil.
It's like Emily Litella -
"What's all this fuss I hear about making Puerto Rico a
steak?" - except the U.S. can't simply shrug "Never mind"
because 900 American troops are dead.
The Bush administration had no good intelligence, so it
decided to invade the Ira- that was weaker.
The war was based on phony W.M.D. analyses and fallacious
welcome scenarios drummed up by the neocon Chihuahua Ahmad
Chalabi.
Mr. Bush should have worried about the Axis of Evil in the
order of the threat posed: North Korea, which has nukes;
Iran, which almost has nukes; Iraq, which wanted nukes.
Now American forces are so depleted that the Pentagon is
pulling forces out of South Korea to go to Iraq. And, given
the huge National Guard deployment in Iraq, states say they
don't have enough manpower to guard prisoners, fight
wildfires or police the streets.
Besides excoriating the C.I.A. and F.B.I. and chronicling
as many as 10 missed opportunities to pick up on the 9/11
plot - in the Bush years and in the Clinton era - the 9/11
commission report has new evidence that Iran may have
helped up to 10 of the hijackers with safe passage from
Osama's Afghan training camps.
"Grimly, what the new 9/11 report makes clear is that
nearly three years into the war on terror, America is still
not close to understanding the enemy," Michael Isikoff and
Michael Hersh report in Newsweek. "And Washington seems
less able to force Tehran to change its ways, especially
since Bush has removed one of the chief threats to the
mullah regime, Saddam Hussein, and is now bogged down in
Iraq. As one intel official said before the Iraq war: 'The
Iranians are tickled by our focus on Iraq.' "
Just as the invasion of Iraq was "a Christmas gift" to
Osama, as the C.I.A. official who wrote a book as
"Anonymous" put it, in terms of recruiting in the Muslim
world and diverting the U.S., so it may be a gift to Iran.
U.S. military officials say Iranian agents have been
helping Iraqi insurgents as a way to shape Iraq into a
Shiite fundamentalist satellite.
Though the 9/11 panel found no "collaborative" relationship
between Iraq and Al Qaeda, it found one between Iran and Al
Qaeda - but no evidence that Iranian officials knew in
advance about the 9/11 attacks.
The report concludes that "Al Qaeda's relationship with
Iran and its client, the Hezbollah militant group, was far
deeper and more longstanding than its links with Iraq,"
according to The Washington Post.
Mr. Bush vowed to deal harshly with any country that
harbors terrorists or assisted the 9/11 plot. But our
military is so overextended from invading Ira-, we'd be
hard pressed to go after Ira-.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/opinion/22dowd.html?ex=1091499588&ei=1&en=9d81ce84c9669daa
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
