But hold on a minute. Just when I start to get comfortable with the idea of supporting military action to liberate Iraq I come across two items of disturbing news.
First that the nuclear option is being considered by the US to deal with chemical weapons hidden underground. I’m no scientist and call me a scare-monger but the idea of destroying chemical weapons with nuclear weapons sounds like a crazy cocktail to me. It might disarm Saddam but it might also leave an awful lot of innocent victims – it doesn’t sound like a serious and responsible tactic for liberating a country.
And talking about liberation – what about the Iraqi democrats who some of us would like to see given a major role in the freeing of their own country? Still no word from Bush or Blair about this aspect but one of the main Iraqi opposition leaders is already warning that they are being ignored.
“We do not know the Americans’ intentions or plans and we do not know if they will help the Iraqi movement in the process of (regime) change or not,” says Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) which draws its support from Iraq’s Muslim Shi’ite majority.
Meanwhile some Iraqi opposition leaders are already going home.
