It’s Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld the hawk pushes for action

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reveals himself as the driving force behind the pro-war campaign in the Bush administration. From his declarations to Fox News, it appears he has already made up his mind: Iraq must be attacked.

Donald Rumsfeld declared in an interview with Fox News that the USA does not have the option not to attack Iraq, likening the decision to use diplomacy to the appeasement leading up to the Second World War (Great Patriotic war) and any absence of action an invitation for another Pearl Harbour to happen.

With a simplistic discourse bordering on the naпve, the US Defence Secretary went on to reason that the American people are a people faced by an imminent attack from Weapons of Mass Destruction, by Iraq, and that action must be taken before “another event takes place”. He declared that the USA does not need any proof that Iraq has, or not, any intention to use WMD or even time to wait for “another UN Resolution”.

Press reports do not state whether the interview was given before or after lunch. However, the revelation that this man, who is responsible for one of the world’s largest military arsenals, considers that his country must act outside the Fora of international law, justifying this with absolutely nothing, is an indication that either he had a temporary lapse of concentration, or that he has some more serious disease.

To claim that no proof is needed as to whether Iraq was intending to use WMD is a claim which surpasses the absurd and proves that in Donald Rumsfeld, the US administration has a Secretary who considers that the USA has the right to wage war anywhere and everywhere it considers upon its own legal pretexts, but devoid of any substantiation under international law.

Such a notion brings into question why Washington even bothers to belong to international organisations (whose resolutions it consistently flouts or ignores) unless of course Donald Rumsfeld is a man shooting in the dark, an island of insanity inside a sea of common sense. One can only hope so.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru