Enemies foreign and domestic

By Mark Alexander · Friday, October 25, 2002

Enemies foreign and domestic were on the move against our countrymen this week, and the big worry is that they are allied -- and we are only beginning to realize their numbers. Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, and the wisest heads have observed the similarities between our current war with Jihadistan and the decades-long Cold War against Communism.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld noted, "Our task today is to do everything in our power -- diplomatic, economic, military, if necessary -- to ensure that history does not repeat itself; that the U.S. avoids a nuclear standoff, like the Cuban missile crisis, with a terrorist state. And President Bush is determined to do just that." Of course, Mr. Rumsfeld was referring to North Korea, now admittedly a nuke-bearing threat, and to Iraq, also a current nuclear armed terror state (according to our sources) and also now the subject of intense consultations and negotiations in the United Nations.

Last week, you recall, Pyongyang was confronted with evidence and forced to admit the existence of its nuclear WMD program, now believed to have already produced functional nuclear weapons. This in spite of the 1994 Agreed Framework Treaty signed by the Clinton administration and brokered by none other than Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter. (The name "Neville Chamberlain" suddenly comes to mind.)

And a clarification regarding North Korea's nuke program: In Federalist No. 02-42, we asserted that North Koreans' access to weapons-grade uranium was actually facilitated by the 1994 Agreed Framework. While this example of Clintonista appeasement was supremely stupid, the enriched uranium at the core of North Korea's nuclear WMD program is most likely the product of gas centrifuges, more efficient even than the gaseous diffusion process the U.S. uses to enrich uranium. And -- as we have previously noted -- gas centrifuge technology is the source of Saddam's weapons-grade uranium.

On the subject of Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice commented this week that regime change in Iraq is no longer the stated policy of the U.S. government. "We think the Iraqi people would be a lot better off with a different leader, a different regime," Mr. Powell said in the week's most controversial statement. "But the principal offense here is weapons of mass destruction, and that's what this [UN] resolution is working on. The major issue before us is disarmament. ... All we are interested in is getting rid of those weapons of mass destruction." Dr. Rice echoed Powell's words on Sunday, reiterating, "The goal here is to disarm Saddam Hussein. And in order to do that, we are going to have to test his willingness to cooperate this time around. If he is not willing to disarm, then the world is going to have to disarm him."

Clarifying the comments of Powell and Dr. Rice, President George Bush reiterated that regime change definitely is his administration's policy, noting: "The stated policy of our government...is regime change, because we don't believe he's going to change. However, if he were to meet all the conditions of the United Nations, the conditions that I've described very clearly in terms that everybody can understand, that in itself will signal the regime has changed."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer hit the mark in his response to media inquiries about "mixed signals," saying: "In the event Saddam Hussein gives the order, and under his leadership and direction disarms Iraq, gives up its weapons of mass destruction, has no more chemical weapons, no more biological weapons, stops using hostility as a way to deal with its neighbors, stops repression of minorities with his own country, give me a call. If you want to fool yourselves into believing that's what Saddam Hussein would do in policy, that's an interesting way to approach it. ...[T]his is probably the mother of all hypotheticals. This is a question of how many devils can dance on the head of a pin."

Regarding these "mixed signals," The Federalist reiterates our contention that a war policy laid out before the public is a war policy doomed to failure. The comments made by Mr. Powell and Dr. Rice were thoroughly calculated and scripted to serve the Bush administration's task of keeping the UN and EU-niks at bay -- and Saddam guessing.