Call it serendipity.

On Monday, our president gravely intoned that inspections for weapons in Iraq aren’t going so well, and that same day, our transatlantic brethren, the British, released a report detailing the many evil deeds of Saddam Hussein.

It might be coincidence, but who would believe that? It isn’t too far-fetched to say the timing of the one-two punch is mighty suspicious, given this president’s well-known desire to destroy Iraq.

“Regime change” is the euphemism the war party uses, but whatever you call it, it looks like the inspections won’t do much good, findings regardless.

War appears inevitable.

As the AP reported it, Hussein has until Sunday “to prove he is serious about averting war.”

“The signs are not encouraging,” the president said of the inspections, noting that the U.N. gumshoes are not in Iraq to “play hide and seek.”

As belligerence goes, it was boilerplate Bush. But if we are to believe the last year’s rhetoric, plus this latest remark, it sounds as if the war might just begin on Monday. Just in case anyone doubts his purpose, the president lodged this threat:

“Looking away from danger would only be a prelude to broader war and greater horror. America will confront gathering dangers early before our options become limited and desperate.”

Now, here’s the interesting thing: The inspectors haven’t said Hussein is playing hide and seek. According to AP, “they have reported no problems gaining access to suspect sites nor have they made public any findings of deadly weapons.”

Weapons notwithstanding, the British dossier was aptly timed.

It avers that Hussein’s regime tortures political opponents with electric drills, gouges out eyes, rapes women, suspends victims from ceilings, stages mock executions, and summarily executes those same opponents. They are heinous misdeeds without doubt, and the point, one can assume, is that Iraq is not a constitutional republic.

That’s hardly news. Iraq, as the report says, “is a terrible place to live.”

So is China, Pakistan, India, Russia, Tibet, Zimbabwe, and about a dozen other places we are not about to invade and destroy.

This was Britain’s second “dossier” about Iraq released of late, and the warning from Bush was not his first and won’t be his last. Given the Sunday “deadline” for Hussein to “prove” he is “serious” about avoiding war, you don’t have to wonder about the timing.

Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it merely augments the propaganda that keeps the financiers of war — taxpayers, and parents, wives and children — delirious with fever.

If Bush and the British stop talking about Iraq, the fever might subside. And then what? So they won’t stop the talking. They won’t stop the threats, even when the U.N. inspectors report nothing. Even a letter from Iraq’s regime lodging a complaint, Bush says, is non-compliance.

The war party will pound the war drums until the attack begins, and keep the cant coming through regime change and inevitable occupation.

In September, this writer predicted war no matter what the inspectors found. The latest oratory, timed with this horror story from the British, confirms that truth. Bush wants war.

Even if he wants to, he can’t back down. But of course, he doesn’t want to.

The only questions are when the shooting will start, and who the first American casualty will be.

R. Cort Kirkwood is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. His e-mail address is: kirkwood@shentel.net.

Copy the Story Link