The American Spectator

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Data Points

12.12.07 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 4)

MY BACK PAGES
Re: G. Tracy Mehan III's A Library of Unread Books:

I have that chronic problem, too. I've never bought a book I didn't intend to read, but time (and magazines like The American Spectator) sometimes keep me from getting to them before newer books crowd them out in the reading line. I can't stop. It's a couple-of-hundred-a-month habit. They've long since overflowed my shelves.

My morbid fear is that someday I'll be found crushed to death under a pile of books that fell over on me. Either that or rent a large storage locker…
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

Please pass along my compliments and thanks to Mr. Mehan for a delightful and self-deprecating article that mirrors my own experience and that, I am sure, of thousands of us. Unfortunately my own collection, of something like one thousand or more books (the preponderance of which I actually read), disappeared in Hurricane Katrina.

I am happily at work continuing the exercise but have only accumulated about fifty, only about ten of which are unread. As long as public libraries are selling used books, I am hooked.
-- Les Arbo
Daphne, Alabama

The library of books -- read or unread -- is moribund.

Within a few decades, information will be absorbed not via books, but via full-immersion virtual reality. You will not read a book. You will live the book.

A few decades after that, the human brain will be redesigned so as to interface with the inscrutable, impossibly evolved Web, where the brain will absorb memes in parallel and by the library, not by the book.

By the end of the 21st century, the book will be as foreign to humans as the arrowhead.
-- David Govett
Davis, California

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Re: Laurie Mylorie's Unintelligence

Ms. Mylroie's article is very well researched and written. Members of the Department State and the CIA have repeatedly attempted to undermine the activities of this administration. This is fact. There are a variety of reasons for this, some of which are not readily apparent.

Some other facts need to be addressed, however. In 2003, the CIA, as well as every other Western intelligence agency, was convinced that the Iraqis did, in fact, have illicit WMD stockpiles in-country. The Iraqis were given six months in which to move, hide or destroy them, prior to the invasion. Since the invasion, information has come to light, from sigint, humint, and documentary sources of Russian activity in Iraq just prior to the invasion. This is believed to have consisted of both diplomatic and military personnel and equipment, some of which may have been related to NBC units. At the time of the invasion, it was known that Iraqi intelligence had contact with representatives of Al Qaeda prior to the 9/11/2001 attacks. There was a lack of hard intelligence concerning the nature of the relationship, other than the information of terrorist training camps in northern Iraq which may have been used to train Al Qaeda operatives. Since the invasion, Iraqi Intelligence service documents have shown that Iraqi Intelligence had a much greater involvement with Al Qaeda than previously thought. No direct evidence has been released that proves direct involvement in the 9/11 attacks, however. But, it can not be totally discounted.

Now we come to the important part of this story. The reasons for the invasion of Iraq. To understand this, it has to be understood that the 1991 Gulf War was fought between Iraq and a Coalition of sovereign nations allied for the purpose of freeing Kuwait from an illegal invasion. It was not fought under the auspices of the United Nations. The only interest the UN had in the war was providing the apparatus for monitoring the destruction of Iraq's WMD and, later, for administering the Oil for Food program.

The second point that needs to be understood is that that war did not end. There was no surrender and no armistice. There was a cease fire, which was to remain in effect as long as the Iraqi government met certain obligations. To put it bluntly, they failed to meet those obligations. They refused inspection teams from the UN for several years and had continually targeted and, in several cases, fired upon Coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone. When the Iraqi government refused to meet their agreed upon obligations under the cease fire agreement, the US and her allies continued prosecution of the Gulf War. What other reasons the current administration may have had for invading Iraq in 2003, is speculation (though some have been written of before).

Now, a series of myths have grown up as to why the US and her allies invaded Iraq in 2003. Some have been bred or fueled by administration miscues, others are fabrications devised by enemies of that administration in an effort to discredit it. But certain things have to be understood when questioning the reasons for the 2003 invasion. Whether WMD existed in Iraq in 2002/2003 is irrelevant. That Iraq would not allow inspections is. Whether Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks is irrelevant. That they were
targeting US aircraft in the no-fly zone is. Whether Iraq was an immediate threat to the US was irrelevant. That Iran was perceived to be one, was.

Letter to the Editor

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