OH, THOSE WRY BRITS (ON

OH, THOSE WRY BRITS (ON IRAQ) Mick Hume, editor of spiked-online, gives perhaps the best (and one of the more amusing) reads on the pro-war and anti-war arguments vis-a-vis Iraq and finds both sides to be insanely stupid and inarticulate. "Exactly what planet is Donald Rumsfeld on?" he asks in his opening, going on to share Rumsfeld's infamous NPR interview where he related his war rationale to... well, read for yourself. Hume shares the tale: ‘And of course,’ says Washington’s military hard man, ‘the advantage of not acting against the Moon would be that no one could say that you acted. They would say, “Isn’t that good? You didn’t do anything against the Moon.” The other side of the coin of not acting against the Moon in the event that the Moon posed a serious threat would be that you then suffered a serious loss and you’re sorry after that’s over.’ Hume continues, "Rumsfeld’s howling at the Moon captures the otherworldly quality of the debate about Iraq. It is a surreal affair in which nobody has offered a good reason for going to war, yet nobody has come up with a good case against it either." Hume slaps around the anti-war side, as well. Because, ultimately, any attack against Iraq is the result of many bad decisions (going back decades and shared by many smart people), a handful of reasonable arguments (yes, some even offered by Republicans), corporate greed (cheap oil, feeding the military-industrial machine), a strange dictatorial need for expansionism and power (ala Saddam Hussein), and some disingeneous interpretations of the role of the United States in a changing world. Oh, yeah, and the Man on the Moon... There's plenty of blame that can be shared.