The Rittenhouse Review

A Philadelphia Journal of Politics, Finance, Ethics, and Culture


Wednesday, January 12, 2005  

IT’S OFFICIAL
The “Mushroom Cloud” Was a Lie
Just One of Many Lies

So much for needing more time, waiting for Iraq to be pacified, all the chatter of underground laboratories and smuggling weapons to Syria, the utterly unfunny talk about looking here, looking there, and under the sofas in the Oval Office, and all of the other absurdities offered by the Bush administration at its convenience and for their arying usefulness -- and including the mushroom cloud of the imagination of Condoleezza Rice -- it’s now “official”: there are and were no “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, and with the flimsy façade now having fallen away, well, we’re just not looking any more.

The Associated Press reports this afternoon:

A White House spokesman said the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq came up empty and is over.

Scott McClellan said there’s no longer an active search for chemical, biological or nuclear arms. He said, “There may be a few people” following up loose ends, but the job is largely done.

President George W. Bush used the threat of Iraq’s banned weapons as a reason for pre-emptive war.

The chief U.S. weapons hunter is to deliver his final report on the search next month. In his early findings, Charles Duelfer reported in September that Saddam Hussein neither had weapons of mass destruction nor the ability to make them. [Ed.: Emphasis added.]

Note the emphasized text: “nor the ability to make them.”

I’m inclined to refer to the war on Iraq and the specious justifications offered therefore as a monumental joke on America, and the entire world, only there’s nothing to laugh at here.

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