When is a War not a War?

Back in the '80's, then-President Ronald Reagan stood before the White House press corps and said the following: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I have just signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

It turns out that ol' Dutch was just joshing, but what he didn't know was that the microphones were turned on, and somebody recorded the whole thing. That quote was later sampled by an enterprising dance music producer, syncopated with some hi-energy techno funk, and released as a reasonably successful dance hit. A classic example of making a silk purse from a sow's ear.

So that was the light-hearted section of today's entry.

I just read an Associated Press article that said US warplanes have been bombing Iraqi military communications installations, and that we have conducted at least 4 bombing raids over the past two days.

Does that mean the war has already started? I cannot imagine that if any Western country had another nation's warplanes fly over and intentionally bomb military installations that that country would not consider itself to have been attacked. Yet in that very same article (which is titled "Bush Mocks Saddam on Weapons Disclosure"), it says that the U.S.-British-Spanish resolution is "…seeking U.N. authorization for War", while the French-Germans-Russians have a proposal on the table to continue weapons inspections at least into July.

Might not be much left to inspect by July, if we continue bombing runs.

What does all this mean, really? I think it means that we, the American people, have NO IDEA what the heck is going on over there, and we probably won't find out until years after the fact. Son of Bush brings us Son of Operation Desert Storm: The Big Payback. Somebody oughta make a dance record out of it.

More later…
Paul