Somehow, the pro-war and anti-war sides of the whole friggin' Iraq issue have managed to sieze on an issue as an axis of pro-anti that I think is (a)moot and (b)entirely bogus. It's the question of Sanctions and Inspections.

Let's all jump into Mr. Peabody's Way-back machine and go back to 1991, when the UN first passed the sanctions against Iraq regarding weapons of mass destruction and oil-for-food. The sanctions were a political solution after the coalition held up short of militarily deposing Saddam, an attempt to bring him to heel by forcing inspections and the destruction of stockpiles of chem, bio and nascent nuclear weapons equipment. Right?

This was 1991.

The problem–we rationed oil sales by Iraq in a way that was supposed to allow the country to only make money to buy food and medical supplies, and then failed to put anything in place within the country to enforce this. In other words, we only violated Iraq's sovriegnty enough to make sure that it had a limited income, but not enough to make sure that income was spent on the people.

That was really, really bad policy, as created by a committee. Everyone hoped that it would make Saddam comply, or get overthrown. Neither happened.

Instead, what happened is that thousands of children died because of deteriorating publlic health and nutritional standards. We can debate the number, but child mortality did increase.

Another piece of bad policy: We institute “no fly zones” to prevent Saddam from using air power to oppress his own people in the north and south. This works to some degree in the north–the Kurds create a somewhat autonomous zone, which develops its own economy. But in the south, Saddam just shuts off the water supply to the Shatt al Arab, draining the marshes and turning it into an easily rolled-over dustbowl. The encouraged uprising among Shiites in the south is rolled over brutally by Saddam.

Really bad policy. Again, the coalition infringed just enough on the sovriegnty of Iraq to justify the occasional bombing run, but not enough to actually have an impact on the political economy of the country.

So, Saddam sees eventually that nobody is really going to screw with him. He kicks out inspectors. No big deal–they never conclusively showed anything anyway. He consolidates control even tighter than before. He builds a few more palaces while children get rickets.

Really bad policy.

So George Dubya has a solution: let's bomb the bastards again, and finish the military solution that we held up on after Operation Desert Shield/Storm/Sunrise/Delight. Finish Dad's war, be more of a man than Dad. After all, we had 9/11, we deserve the right to kick anybody's ass we want.

Really bad policy.

So, to the people saying, “give the sanctions and inspections more time.” I say, “Hey, meatheads! We've only been screwing the people that way for 12 years. We have to stop pussyfooting around with the sovriegnty thing here and send in more than inspectors.”

To the people saying “See, inspections failed for 12 years, let's go in with troops and force them to disarm,” I say,”Hey, morons! Since when did dropping bombs on someone encourage disarmamant? You've been waiting for 12 years, what's the freaking rush all of a sudden–a rush of testosterone to the head after Afghanistan?”

The last time I checked, two wrongs didn't make a right. I keep checking the math, and it still ends up as two wrongs. But it doesn't look like math is a family value right now.