The Three Monkeys Gambit

I don't read Maureen Dowd much anymore because I got tired of her smug sarcasm and her negativity about nearly everyone and everything. Today's column is a good example. She complains that Bush's speech to the U.N. didn't give "compelling new evidence" against Saddam Hussein. One senses that no matter what evidence he had produced she would have said the same thing. After all, "compelling" depends on one's own standards of proof, and if one doesn't want to be convinced, no amount of proof is compelling. Since the demand for more proof has been adopted as this week's talking points by the Democrats in Congress and the liberals in the media, what else could we expect.

As I read her supercilious screed, I was reminded that all the existing evidence against Saddam as being without restraint in his evil is more than sufficient. Gassing his own people should be enough. Setting fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields should be enough, since it shows that he has no limits to his will to harm others. He will certainly use nuclear weapons if he ever gets control of one. For him, nihilism is a logical imperative, since his power has always been built on fear, not just the "Sopranos" type of fear, but the fear of the totally irrational, the berzerk. Dowd and the rest don't really need any more compelling new evidence. They just need to pull their heads out.