A friend of mine pointed out the other day that if he were a primitive shaman, his prognosis would be that the gods are really pissed off, as evidenced by their recent torrent of disasters.

What kind of disasters? How about fires in nightclubs and fuel barges in Rhode Island and New York, a small earthquake in California and the roof collapsing at a Toys ‘R’ Us, all preceded by brimstone dropping from the sky in the form of an exploded space shuttle loosely named after the Americas.

Some would say that the gods are pissed off at America because we are moving ever closer to attacking a nation that, though they have decided to ignore some international agreements, has not attacked anyone. Although Bush has grown to act like an extreme right-wing version of Caesar more and more lately, it is hopeful his father did not raise a complete fool and something must be up to motivate him to annoy half the UN security council members.

What are these motivations? The American consensus at the moment includes one or more of the following: 1) Bush is after oil; 2) Bush is after votes; 3) Bush is concerned about Iraq’s threat to America and her allies; and/or 4) Bush is genuinely concerned about the welfare of the Iraqi people (the Kurds in the way, so to speak). It is highly probably that all of these motivations are on Bush’s priority list, so much so that he is seemingly ignoring the severe nuclear threat potential of North Korea and possibly even Iran for the time being. Nevertheless, if the third motivation is about Iraq is true, all other motivations become secondary and trivial.

Last Saturday, I spent much of the evening with the friends and family of a reservist military man who was about to be deployed, ripped from the arms of his fiancÇe to serve a year somewhere. Though he didn’t know his destination after Fort Carson, he did know he was being issued desert BDUs, which means his unit is most likely destined to go to Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. At one point in the evening, the topic of oil was mentioned.

He gave a concerned look and said something like, “We’re not going anywhere for oil. We are moving against a man who has been proven to have biological and chemical weapons. He has used these types of weapons against his own people and he would have no problem developing and selling, or giving such weapons to highly organized groups of people who have dedicated their very lives to hurting the American people. We are moving to prevent this from happening.”

He said this with such rapidity and fluidity, I’m sure that he heard such words either in a briefing or shared such words with his unit, but he’s too smart to simply bite into and regurgitate rhetoric for there to not be some manner of truth in what he said.

No matter what our opinions might be about our monkey-like leader’s techniques, leadership abilities, foreign policies, intentions, hypocritical nature regarding other dangerous nations or political plans might be, the sheer fact that Colin Powell, a downright cool and honorable man, is traveling all around the world to convince the global community of Saddam Hussein’s highly probably madness makes me believe we are not witnessing any kind of “Wag The Dog” phenomenon. Saddam Hussein is a threat and a danger.

No amount of pre-World War I isolationism or moral juggling will change this.

Is an impending war convenient for our nation’s (and even Bush’s) oil interests? Almost certainly. Is an impending war a convenient way to garner votes? History says, “probably,” though it wasn’t the case for Bush Senior. Is the removal of Saddam Hussein the best, last resort to prevent him from hurting people outside his nation as well as inside. The answer, unfortunately, is yes.

The UN was very stupid after the Gulf War, ignoring history by treating Iraq like a post-Treaty of Versailles Germany rather than a post-Marshall Plan Germany.

Nevertheless, if we are to pull a Chamberlain in the upcoming months or years, the gods most certainly will show their anger, possibly with horrible biological or chemical results.

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