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More Wmd Pie In Sky According To

Juan Cole 10/14/2005

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More WMD Pie in the Sky

According to Douglas Jehl of the New York Times, , in a January, 2003 conversation with Tony Blair, George W. Bush said that he “wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea and Pakistan.”

What is odd about this list is that Pakistan is a US ally and rolling back its nuclear program would be impossible unless India gave up its, as well (unlikely); Saudi Arabia is not known to have any “weapons of mass destruction; ” and Iran’s capability in that area is presently very limited (no nukes, maybe some old mustard gas from the 1980s, and unproved allegations of some experimentation with biological weapons).

How to explain Bush’s strange agenda? Well, when someone doesn’t read the newspapers and doesn’t know anything about the wider world, and just accepts whatever close aides tell him, then he might easily believe 10 impossible things before breakfast. The real question is who his aides are really working for, who wants Bush to believe these dangerous fantasies.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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