THE NEW YORK TIMES ON PRE-EMPTION: The invaluable Jeffrey Goldberg presents what is to my mind an unarguable case for removing Saddam from power in Slate. But his real discovery is a New York Times editorial of June 9, 1981. It concerned the Israelis' pre-emptive strike against Saddam's Osirak nuclear plant. Under the headline, "Israel's Illusion," the Times declared:
Israel's sneak attack on a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression. Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago.
There you have it: the moral equivalence, the short-sightedness, the moral preening, all disguising a fantastic error of judgment. If Saddam had had that nuclear capacity, there would have been no Gulf War, or one with disastrous consequences. The Times, of course, never learns. But this time, the security of the United States is at stake. We cannot let ourselves be led by the deluded and the defeatist any more.
- 7:01:14 PM
Error of judgement it may have been, but one which caused the Reagan administration to withhold arms shipments to Israel and rumor is it inspired his vice president to demand retaliatory strikes against Israel. I agree - Israel was right on this one, but it wasn't just the NYT that was against it.
NOTE TO ANDY: SADDAM WAS OUR BUDDY THEN!
If the NYT was guilty of anything it was what the U.S. press is always guilty of -- going along with U.S. foreign policy no matter what it is.
By HOWELL RAINES Special to the New York Times
WASHINGTON, July 16 - The Reagan Administration is expected to announce tomorrow that it will release to Israel the four F-16 fighterbombers whose delivery was held up after the Israeli air strike on the Iraqi reactor.
White House sources said the announcement would be made at the State Department. The four F-16's, whose delivery was scheduled for last month, were withheld pending a determination whether Israel had used Americansupplied planes in the raid in violation of United
States statutes limiting such weapons to defensive purposes.
American officials also made it clear that delaying the planes was a way of reprimanding Israel and calming Arabs who demanded that the United States condemn Israel for the attack on Iraq.
Assurances on Other F-16's
After it delayed the June deliveries, however, the Administration announced that it would go ahead with delivery of six other F-16's to be released to Israel tomorrow. White House spokesmen said at the time that the matter of the four planes would be resolved by the time
the six were due to be delivered.
Since the policy was announced July 1, it has been regarded as a foregone conclusion that the United States would eventually deliver all the planes. But the Administration faced the problem of working out a diplomatic explanation for its action that did not appear either to
endorse Israel's attack or to call into question the United States' role as an ally of Israel.
Is Andy this stupid? Really? My god.