I'm at a place called Vertigo

Week Two of Andi's Pushback and today airforcewife has put up an article by someone with inside knowledge of the "weapons of mass destruction" issue. It's astounding, read the whole thing here.

These are my edited highlights. I hope they make you want to click the link and read more. Remember, knowledge is power.

"The laws of irony are strictly enforced. The first WMD we found was actually used against us. A roadside bomb filled with binary Sarin exploded near a convoy carrying ISG personnel. Sarin is a non-persistent nerve agent."

"But the physical evidence doesn’t tell the whole story. The interrogation portion does that. Many, many scientists talked about Saddam’s weapons production. The production wasn’t large scale, and it wasn’t quality stuff, but it was there. The question on your mind is this: where is the rest of the stuff?"

Note: I thought Syria hid a lot of material for Saddam before reading this, and mentioned it in my "Re-thinking" post. Well, isn't this interesting:

"According to the UN and every intel agency on the planet, right before the war 5000 big rigs worth of “stuff” crossed the border, never to be seen again.. What kind of stuff was this? I’ll give you a hint -- it’s stuff Saddam didn’t want captured."

"The problem with bio, chem, and nukes is that you don’t need many of them to cause a hell of a lot of problems for someone. And once you have them, it's incredibly easy to make more."

"But mostly, the moral of this story is that there was and IS WMD in Iraq. And the media could tell this story better then I can. But they don’t want to."

Of course all of this is confirmed in two books I have right here by my elbow - Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward and The Bomb in My Garden by Obeidi and Pitzer.

Someone said to me the other day "keep saying it and maybe after 500 times they'll start to believe it". Thing is, I'm in advertising so the wastage breaks my heart. Why can't a persuasive argument do the job more swiftly?

That's why the concept of a tipping point is so interesting.

Just a quick, further note. I found an interesting Independent newspaper article, via Little Green Footballs, read the article here.

"Charity cash for Palestinian poor was siphoned to suicide bombers"

"The charge sheet names two British charities, Human Appeal International and Interpal. Human Appeal is a broadly based fundraising organisation, currently helping victims of the Pakistani earthquake. Interpal describes itself as "a non-political, non-profit-making charity that focuses solely on the provision of relief and development aid to the poor and needy of Palestine". No one was available for comment at its London office yesterday."

"There is no doubt in police minds that Mr Salatna's arrest will be a major blow to those who rely on economic support from Hamas in order to carry out terrorist acts and to give their families financial backing."

That's something I've learned from studying the Michael Collins story - follow the money.

So Una, music and Michael Collins and if I can just think of a movie reference I'll have touched on all the old obsessions - hmmm - how about:

"I can't fight it any more. I ran away from you once. I can't do it again. I don't know what's right any longer. You'll have to think for both of us, for all of us."