A political note

When I woke this morning, the UN inspectors were on the radio, explaining that Iraq had been, in the phrasing of our house, "sullen but not mutinous", and that more cooperation would be helpful. I listened for a long time while I worked. Eventually WNYC-AM cut over to the Daily White House Press Briefing (live from the Daily White House), where I got to listen to Ari Fliesher lie a lot.

I was particularly struck by one passage in the middle. Here it is:

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, the biggest fear and the biggest concern is that Saddam Hussein does, indeed, possess weapons of mass destruction in the form of biological and chemical weapons. And I think it's important just to take one step back. And often we talk weapons of mass destruction, as if those are just vocabulary words. Weapons of mass destruction will inflict untold horrors on the civilized world. They can take the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, as well as be a weapon of terror that can dramatically change the life that the American people have come to live and expect.

Notice the shift. He specifically identifies the concern as "biological and chemical weapons". Then he resumes the rhetorical catchphrase of "weapons of mass destruction" and says they can take "the lives of hundred of thousands, if not millions".

If Saddam Hussein had every anthrax spore in the world, he wouldn't be able to use them to kill millions of people. Smallpox might just possibly kill millions if Iraqi agents roamed the world for years causing fresh outbreaks and immunization programs for some reason mysteriously were not resumed. The only way Iraq could kill millions with chemical weapons is if someone nuked Bagdhad in response to him using them.

For millions dead, Iraq would need nukes. And Ari just said that the Daily White House isn't concerned with Iraq's nuclear weapons, probably because he knows they don't have any and aren't going to get any.