I Wuz Right (Sort Of)

The sometimes impenetrable J-Stro has been having a good gloat in various comments threads over the fact that I squibbed out on my moralising, interminable and inconclusive series of blogs on the recent war, while he, with his superior understanding of geopol, the Bush Administrations's fopo and dopo agendas, and an intellect unclouded by discredited lopo or pomo ideology, produced the only ethico-political theory of the war which yielded a testable hypothesis.

Whether J-Stro's testable hypothesis should be accorded any more respect than Athena Star-Woman's, equally testable prediction, based on the current position of Jupiter, that Leos can expect to meet a tall, dark handsone stranger this week, is questionable. But, for whatever merit there is in these things, here's a prediction I made on March 24:

Ken Parish has an interesting post up Through a glass slightly less darkly, which is attracting a fair bit of comment, some on the subject of Saddam Hussein's weapons of you know what, and when they are likely to be used. As we know that we're talking principally about chemical weapons (such as VX gas) and biological weapons (such as bacillus anthracis) - the nukes seem to have been dropped off the agenda. I'm prepared to say, with a little confidence and a lot of hope that they won't be used. [emphasis added]

Unlike J-Stro's hypothesis, where all the supporting evidence has to be drawn by inference from the statements of White House officials, as interpreted by the media, this one should be easy to refute: just produce one recorded instance where Saddam's chemical or biological weapons were used in Gulf War II. Unfortunately, this doesn't validate the "theory" I used to produce this prediction: derrida derider shot a couple of large holes in its historical basis. Nor is it particularly relevant to the new debate over whether we wuz lied to about the threat of Saddam's weapons in the first place and whether it is acceptable for a democratic government to lie to the electorate. (Or, if you prefer the soft option, whether it is desirable for us, as citizens, to go on electing governments who are so bloody credulous on issues of national security). It's just another piece of the self-indulgent opinionated crap that blogging is really all about.