Political poker face hides information needed to gamble on war

In the humble heart of this military-minded moderate Democrat, Colin Powell should run for Emperor of the World, and I will sound my barbaric yawp to his support without the slightest hesitation. With a juxtapositive peace-hawk M.O. during an uncertain time that calls for quiet yet unflagging strength, and a rags-to-riches, Bronx-to-Beltway story that is quintessentially American, Secretary General Powell idealizes the Rooseveltian vision for men, president and country to tread lightly but wield tree trunks just in case.

Except that Powell is wrong, and I fear we’ve been too hasty. I’m more afraid that he is afraid of the same. Persuading the United Nations with porous scraps of American covert intelligence was not his idea: it couldn’t have been because the intelligence reports were too sparse, too unconvincing. They would not even have held up in the most permissive courtroom, because partially declassified sound bites can never be bastions of credibility. Who was on the tapes? When were they made? Were their translations, read by Powell and likely transcribed for the benefit of curious U.N. delegates, verified independently as accurate to their sources? Or is the whole world, and chiefly among them the American people, supposed to simply take former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-turned-first African-American Secretary of State Powell’s word for it?

Since Sept. 11, President Bush has made clear who ultimately calls the shots, for better or for worse, and that is neither General Powell nor any other advisor. But are we supposed to take Bush on his word, too, that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction (as if we don’t) and that the Eastern Hemisphere houses an ‘Axis of Evil’ whose guns are primed at us (as if they aren’t spewing the same rhetoric about us, and we didn’t claim the same about USSR)? I am a branded American who earned his dog tags and supports our president, our military and our Constitution: I’m ready to fight, if there’s a reason to. But strangely, that has become the question rather than the solution. And normally, that question should be answered long before War Powers Acts are signed, troops are deployed and families are torn apart, on both sides of various oceans, sometimes forever.

We encountered anthrax, so we know it was there. We’ve survived Sept. 11 and its anniversary. But have we seen a single weapon of mass destruction flung from Iraq, where we assert they are, or North Korea, where they admit they are? We have heard that Hussein turned toxic gases on the rebel Kurds within his dominion several years ago, and resorted to the nasty trick of using innocents as tactical shields. But have we actually seen even a single non-conventional concussion warhead (like the Scud) or a nuclear reactor, let alone a warhead that was produced in one? Do you remember, as I do, watching the guided and video camera-topped “smart bombs” from the Gulf War slip into enemy chimneys and go fuzzy as they exploded on CNN? If not, you might at least recall bombs over Baghdad exploding in green through the media’s night-vision lenses? The audience was always told that these shots (which looked eerily similar day after day) were live, but it was later revealed that the military intelligence had only authorized the released of a tiny number of clips to the national news media, which they in turn pieced together and played on loop.

We want to trust our government and media, but there are certain pieces of definitive proof missing. For instance, the world hears of Iraq’s nuclear potential, and U.N. arms inspectors fret about it: but why haven’t we seen pictures of the lakes that must be located next to uranium and plutonium processing reactors? Since water is a vital cooling agent for the core of a nuclear reactor and pure water is the primary by-product of the radioactive ore weaponization process, U.S. aerial reconnaissance scour enemy territories looking for pools of water that are new, or where they should be none given the surrounding landscape. America is waiting to see these pictures.

Imagine a very embarrassing scenario for the United States and its allies, which would be lethal to Saddam Hussein personally and a godsend to his subjugated nation: what if this were all a bluff and Hussein is playing a World War-scale game of chicken? The United States has mobilized its military, thrown its economy into a whirlwind, and jeopardized the perpetuation of “liberty and justice for all,” not for kicks but in response to what it perceives as an imminent threat. Yet if Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and their minion enemies of life and America are in a cave somewhere howling in laughter, who has really won the war before the battle has begun?

Jonathon Scott Feit is a graduate student in the University Professors program.