The Iraq bombings won’t accomplish much and I expect Saddam will just sit this out for 3 days and wait for it to pass. This is the US at its worst — lobbing over a couple hundred cruise missiles without putting any actual soldiers into the field. Besides, if you start a bombing campaign that you warned will be “sustained” and say from the get-go when it will end (ie: at Ramadan), you’re not exactly intimidating anyone. We won’t know for 1-2 weeks if this accomplishes anything besides running up a bill. Meanwhile, the Iraqis pay the price for all this and I do feel for them. I take Clinton at his word that Butler’s report dictated the timing; I don’t think the rest of the team (Albright, Cohen & Berger) would play along with Wag the Dog. It was not unnoticed by me that the Americans sent marines and patriots to Israel under the cover of Clinton’s visit and that the inspection team all of a sudden went to Bahrain. Frankly though, I expected more of a lag before an attack.
By now, it has become evident that the House will vote to impeach partly because they think they have a free kick since the Senate probably won’t convict but as I forecasted a week ago, these things have a way of snowballing in a counterintuitive way and last week’s committee vote massed into this week’s impeachment vote. I am personally becoming rather upset about all this. A decade ago we wasted 2 years on Iran-Contra and I suppose that the Republicans are now going for their revenge. Now we will waste a year on this. All I want is for these people to cut my damn taxes please and work to improve the country. Impeachment should not be used as a political football and there are times better left to putting things aside, particularly if (1) he can be indicted in 2 years after he leaves office; (2) the majority of the country is happy with him as president; (3) the cost of wasting time and money to pursue this right now at the expense of other issues has to be weighed against the benefit (ie: removing him from office).
I predict 2 things, both of which will result in the republicans losing the war in the long term: (1) this will divide the country (I already see people around me becoming personally angry about this) and create a new generation of activist democrats more so than republicans because the democrats will feel that they have been victimized and the republicans will eventually pay a price for this; (2) if clinton is thrown out or pushed to the wall, gore will take over and use the next year to solidify his hold on the office. if he had to run against george bush, jr. in an election without incumbency, i think bush would wipe the floor with him. not so as an incumbent.
