Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Ok so its been a while, a little politics. The current geopolitical picture has among other things the US involved in a "war" in Afghanistan, poised to attack Iraq and working through "an issue but NOT a crisis" in North Korea.

From the first talk of war with Iraq I have personally been opposed to unilateral action. The Bush administration started out with stance and rhetoric to the effect that the US was going to disarm Iraq in a unilateral fashion and that the opinion of the rest of the world was not very important. That has since changed, in large part due to political pressure from the rest of the world, to a much more reasoned and reasonable approach that is NOT at all unilateral. The US went to the UN Security Council and got a resolution to send inspectors back in. That resolution has a time table and consequences, etc. Well now the inspectors have been back in Iraq for some time and as of yet have found nothing (publicly at least). Of course this does not mean that disallowed weapons do not exist, it just means that the formal process has not yet discovered any. Iraq did release a required manifest of its weapons and that has fallen short of what the US wanted, but no actual weapons have been found. (Note: the US may have intelligence information that would change the Iraq picture, or definitely has according to statements made by cabinet members and the President. This information purportedly proves Iraq has "weapons of mass destruction" but this information has not been made public nor apparently given to the inspectors, until PROOF is available the US rhetoric is just specious politics.)

Still the US is hell bent on war in Iraq and massive troop deployments happen daily. Lets get this straight, the UN Security Council sent in inspectors at the begrudged behest of the states, the mandate of the inspectors is clear, Iraq allowed the inspectors and they have yet found nothing, the US is more than ever ready to attack?

At the same time on the world stage North Korea has not gotten the fuel oil and food and "normalized relations" that the US promised it. In fact under the Bush administrations leadership these items have been completely denied despite prior agreements. As a result North Korea has ejected inspectors and restarted nuclear power plants that are proven to be capable of processing weapons grade plutonium. North Korea can have nuclear weapons in a matter of months, fact not speculation. North Korea has taken these actions to use the nuclear plants to make power, so they say, but it is also a known fact that these plants cannot produce much power at all. To this crisis the US says it is not a crisis at all and that "dialog" can resolve the "issue".

This is an obvious contradiction in foreign policy. Bush called BOTH of these countries part of the "axis of evil" (a very large blunder in and of itself as that mere statement put the North Koreans on edge unnecessarily). Bush stated that the US would use a preemptive strike against either if required to "protect" US interests. Yet now that the more immediate and obvious threat is North Korea the troops get sent to Iraq?

Why is this? Because Iraq is an easy target for the war machine. Iraq is small and weak and the war will be great for the economy (yes in the short term it will hurt with oil issues, but in the long run the military industries are happy and oil stability returns to better than pre-war status), the war in Iraq is in essence a political move, not a "security" move. The stance with North Korea proves the political nature of the Iraq conflict without a doubt. Whatever the perceived or real threat in Iraq, it is undoubtedly not as great as North Korea.

There is certainly greater difficulty in dealing with North Korea and different circumstances, but they have EJECTED the inspectors and flat out stated they will resume nuclear operations. Iraq denies nuclear operations and has allowed the inspectors. Disparity?