Jon Caroll

Ladies and gentleman, fortunate enough to read this piece, it is by John Carroll a journalist who writes for the San Francisco chronicle. Read him. He really is the BEST.


This is so good. According to a memo written by a senior British foreign policy adviser and leaked vigorously to newspapers in both this country and England, President Bush was determined to go to war with Iraq long before he said he was, and he and Tony Blair discussed possible excuses for mounting the assault, because "we just want to, OK?" might not have worked so well.
Their eventual solution, you'll recall, was to send Colin Powell to lie at the United Nations. Remember when Colin Powell had credibility? It was back then. The Bush White House is sort of like a roach motel -- your reputation checks in, but it does not check out. Maybe that's why there's so little turnover. Why would Donald Rumsfeld want to leave the comfy environs of his Potemkin Pentagon?
Anyway, here are some of the ideas they came up with: (1) assassinate Saddam Hussein. The United States could then invade under the guise of restoring order, protecting American lives, all that. Good thing they didn't try that tactic, because when they finally did decide to assassinate Saddam Hussein, they couldn't find him. Not at that restaurant? Sorry, the intelligence was bad. Great kebabs, though.
Then there was (2), finding a defector who would say positively for sure that Hussein had boatloads of nukes and silos filed with sarin gas and many other WMDs. Certainly they had plenty of defectors who would be happy to say that -- or, indeed, anything -- but their motives might be suspect; they were, after all, defectors. Besides, why use a defector no one has ever heard of when you've got the secretary of state?
But my favorite was (3), painting a U-2 spy plane with U.N. colors and flying it over Iraq hoping Hussein would take a shot at it. Then we would rise in righteous indignation over this affront to the international community and plunge into battle with the bunker-buster bombs and the badly armored National Guard troops. It's not clear why this option was not approved -- perhaps a shortage of light blue paint.
Some of the other plans not mentioned in the memo but definitely part of U.S. planning, according to an agent high up in a tall building, probably one with a revolving restaurant on top:
Create a hastily scrawled note from Hussein to his top generals saying (in Arabic, of course): "Please find large planes so we can fly them into tall American buildings. Also, see if Russia will lend us some nuclear bombs. P.S.: Isn't there any good coffee in this joint?" Defectors would swear that the note was authentic and the handwriting was definitely Hussein's, noting that they had been to the palace and the coffee was indeed atrocious.
Persuade the nation of Jordan to covertly open its borders to Iraqi troops, tempting them across with ripe cantaloupes and Angelina Jolie movies. Once they had entered the country, the United States would declare that an invasion was under way and that we had no choice but to come to the aid of our friend Jordan. If our friend Jordan resisted, we could always invade it instead. Big upside: much smaller country. Big downside: hardly any oil.
Persuade American schoolchildren to dress up like refugees. Have them appear on the floor of Congress and start singing "God Bless America." Arrange for national television coverage. President Bush would dramatically enter the chamber, mount the podium, throw his arms wide and say, "the children, the children. How can we deny the children?" And everyone would agree that we could not deny the children, and before it was discovered that the children were not Iraqis and not refugees and not being denied anything except Xboxes, sorry, war already started, have to stay the course.
That does sound silly, but it's not that far off from what actually happened. We went to war in order to create peace in the Middle East, we killed Iraqis in order to save Iraqi lives, we set up a military autocracy in order to restore democracy. To be fair, a democracy-like government was eventually created, and the United States is now quarreling with it over the nature of current hostilities. They say the Shiites, we say the Sunnis, and there's no way of calling the whole thing off.
In wildly unrelated news: Two weeks ago, I made a slighting reference to the Stanford women's basketball team. I have no idea whether that sentence from the column was used as bulletin board material to fire up the troops, but if so, my pleasure. And, for the record, I was so very, very wrong about them. So wrong.
Or here's one: Burn our own embassy down. Sure, it's an old trick, but with the right spin and a few really tragic deaths, it could be golden.