Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 22:02:45 +1100
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Iraq will be bombed


G'day Hugh,

>Perhaps we could have a show of hands on the list. Who thinks the States'll
>go ahead, and who thinks they'll get cold feet?

Geez, you're old, Hugh!  The closest I got to abstract thought in 1968 was
wondering why I suddenly had difficulty peeing after an episode of The
Avengers!

And, yes, I think the Aglo-Saxon brotherhood will go in.  I reckon they've
put themselves in a spot here.  If they resile now, Saddam looks the goods,
doesn't he?  Maybe they have it in mind to try to ensure Saddam is killed
by way of 'collateral damage'.  Is there any sniff of a 'friendlier'
potentate in waiting?

I predict a strike immediately the Nagano Winter Games Closing Ceremony is
over - there's a schedule window then, and the military PR machine can use
the intervening days to write up the shot-list and voice-overs.

Does anyone have reliable body counts for the last adventure (I've heard
150 000 mooted - nearly all civilians and conscripts - and nearly all
killed by whooping American 19-year-olds who hadn't yet accumulated the
imagination to connect the special effects on their visor sights to
shrieking human fireballs.

There are, I fear, mums feeding their infants somewhere in Iraq as we
speak, who will be fused with their little ones in twisted black messes
this time next week.  We always knew Saddam didn't care.  Clinton's record
on the execution of mentally retarded perps was always a pointer.  But the
other day, I heard the boss of our Labor Party, Kim Beazley, say he agreed
with John Howard's decision to join in, ON PRINCIPLE!

Maybe Oz's duocracy is a little unnerved by the social disintegration
playing out in benighted Indonesia, and wants to accumulate some browny
points with the boss just in case things get strategic in this part of the
world ...

May the people of Iraq forgive us ...

Rob.


************************************************************************

Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.

Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
Fax:    02-6201 5119

************************************************************************

'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)

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