Sunday, November 16, 2003
Some Adult Supervision from The Economist Magazine
While most people seem to be focused on the backward-looking, childish ‘did-not, did-too’ argument over whether the Bush/Blair administration exaggerated the WMD threat—replete with the predictable arguments from professionally predictable people on TV, it’s nice to see The Economist looking realistically forward:
“The flimsiness of some of the claims about Mr. Hussein’s arsenal…also risks making the danger posed by WMD seem more rhetorical and less real than it is, and may jeopardize future efforts to deal with that danger—especially any that involve acting pre-emptively.”
The Economist, Oct. 4th, 2003. Pg 16.
(Alright—mail’s slow out here, ok?!)
The debate over how to diffuse any potential future WMD threat is vastly more important than whether Hussein was 45 minutes away from the bomb. But count the minutes or paragraphs devoted to the former vs. the latter subject.
Is the mass media really illuminating the subject? Or is most of the light being provided by the steady glow of enriched uranium rods in reactors in North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran?
“The flimsiness of some of the claims about Mr. Hussein’s arsenal…also risks making the danger posed by WMD seem more rhetorical and less real than it is, and may jeopardize future efforts to deal with that danger—especially any that involve acting pre-emptively.”
The Economist, Oct. 4th, 2003. Pg 16.
(Alright—mail’s slow out here, ok?!)
The debate over how to diffuse any potential future WMD threat is vastly more important than whether Hussein was 45 minutes away from the bomb. But count the minutes or paragraphs devoted to the former vs. the latter subject.
Is the mass media really illuminating the subject? Or is most of the light being provided by the steady glow of enriched uranium rods in reactors in North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran?
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