Last Tango in Baghdad

"The war was a cakewalk after all," observes Jeffrey St. Clair in a piece for Counterpunch. "The three week invasion offered barely a battle to speak of: a few small arms firefights, a couple of wobbly Scuds launched harmlessly into the Kuwaiti desert, an ambush or two. That was about the most the Iraqis choose (or could) mount. Even the gurus of 4th Generation Warfare must feel cheated that the much-ballyhooed asymmetrical street fight never really materialized. The Americans killed nearly as many American and British soldiers as the Iraqis did."

This begs the question: if it was so easy, why was it necessary? How big of a threat was the Beast of Baghdad, after all? Did his rusting army, even the supposedly fearsome Republican Guard, really pose any kind of the threat to the US? Or even the pampered sheiks of Kuwait?

The relentlessly hyped arsenal Weapons of Mass Destruction were never used, if they even existed in any militarily useful condition to begin with. The long-range rockets were never launched. The oil wells and dams were never dynamited, despite Rumsfeld's pompous claims about "environmental terrorism"-surely one of the crudest hypocrisies yet uttered by this apex hypocrite.

Why was it necessary? Who benefits? What will happen once the military moves on?

These are questions that will never get serious answer over here. Indeed, the questions may even never be asked, in the scripted kabuki shows that are passed off as Bush press conferences.

Too bad. They are the only questions that really matter.