LILEKS (James) The Bleat

Those in the mood to think seriously about the “inspections” issue can skip right to here; those who don’t come here for that are forewarned, because it’s coming up.

Tonight we are dealing with Hives. Gnat has hives. That’s the good thing about dogs: if they get hives, you have no idea, so you don’t consult the books. Dog medical books are rather basic, anyway; the main symptom for all dog ills appears to be listless, or vomiting, or listlessness and vomiting. In general dogs just go until they stop, which is sadly one o the reasons we take them for granted. They’re like running water and electricity. Jasper has been sick a few times - as a puppy he was nearly carried off by parvo, and staged a miraculous recovery that stunned the vets. The sight of the little puppy hooked up to an IV, panting in his vet kennel, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever seen; tore us up. And we’d had him just three days. Now he has a touch of dysplasia in his hips, but the vet’s main suggestion - a diet - has brought back his old spring.

Babies, however, are different, prone to the innumerable small perfidies of the flesh. We have a large tome from Mayo that details exactly everything that can go wrong - it’s like a how-to book for parents with Munchausen-by-proxy. Full of horrible illustrations (Plate 1: scabies. Plate 2: Johnson’s Slough. Plate 3: Projectile Auto-Deboning) so I never look at it, but tonight I was curious where the hives might be coming from. Dinner? I cooked a light curry, something she’s had a dozen times before. An allergic reaction to the polishing cloth I used on the sofa? Doubtful. A reaction to taking an hour nap on the leather sofa in a hot room? Most probable. If I took her to the emergency room, they’d prescribe two fingers of gin. For me. Relax, dad.

Yes, I know that hives can be a sign of a bad allergic reaction, and I know what to look for - facial swelling, difficulty breathing, cranial revolutions, Latinate ejaculations, etc. I reserve my hypochondria for myself.

A fellow I know wrote a hilarious book about hypochondria - I know it was hilarious because everything he writes is hilarious. But I couldn’t read it, lest I get all the things he said he was worried about getting. This was why it was not the best-selling book it deserved: the only people who would really get it wouldn’t buy it, because they might catch cancer.

Other childrearing notes: I have instilled manners in the Gnat. When she burps she says “Excuse me.” And today she took two stuffed animals, made them shake hands, and she said “Good to see you.” Hypocrisy being an invaluable requirement for civilization, Daddy couldn’t be more pleased. Next I’ll teach her the phrase “Your proposal has some merits.” Right after I teach her that when playing with faux food, carrots are not a pizza topping. In some circles they may be, but let her find out the horrors of real life on her own.

Okay. Current events.

Why do I get the feeling that those who support “muscular inspection” - i.e., weapons inspectors backed up by military force - are sometimes the same people who tell me that violence doesn’t solve anything?

I’ve been thinking about these newfangled, extra-angry inspections for the last day, and how they’d work. My very own paper had an editorial on the matter that echoes the familiar UN line: we should make sure Saddam has no WMDs, we should leave him in power, and time is on our side. To quote:

Washington must push to get teams of weapons inspectors back in Iraq as soon as possible. The teams are highly professional, well-trained and ready to go. If Saddam has weapons programs, they can find the proof -- provided that they are given unrestricted access to all of Iraq.

Jesus wept. They can find the proof if they’re given unrestricted access to all of Iraq! In a best case scenario, this is like saying they can find the needle if they’re permitted to search the entire haystack - which, incidentally, is nine miles wide. (And part of it is on fire.) It almost sounds as if they believe the Marines will swarm over every installation simultaneously, kick down doors, and shoot anyone who fumbles with the keys for more than ten seconds.

Let’s consider a hypothetical situation here - one inspection of a hundred. It might go something like this:

The day after Iraq admits inspectors, satellite photos show trucks coming in and out of a particular facility - let’s call it Compound W. Some trucks are tracked, but lost in a nearby city. Roadblocks are installed at Compound W immediately - but of course some trucks got through the day before, and the days before that.

It takes a day to inspect all the trucks queued up to leave Compound W. Inspectors open boxes, barrels, crates, etc. The drivers are surly and argumentative, but agree to inspection after the Marines step forward and point their weapons. After a day, the team is ready to move to the installation.

(Since there are operations like this going on all over the country, the team was not able to call for backup to inspect the facility while running the roadblock inspection.)

Day Two. Compound W is entered. It consists of six large warehouses, four smaller storage facilities, two buildings of undetermined purpose, three administrative buildings, four barracks, a barrel field, a motor pool, a small mosque, and a cafeteria. The team spends the first day on the warehouses. Numbers 1, 2, and 3 contain little of consequence - dried foods, ammunition, spare parts. But HQ has advised that chemical weapons could be stored in mislabeled boxes or food pouches, so everything must be opened and inspected.

Day Three: Work continues on the contents of the warehouses. Meanwhile, in Warehouse 4, inspectors discover a big metal plate bolted to the floor; the Iraqis cannot adequately explain its purpose. The inspectors radio back to the superiors, alerting them that they may have found an access route to a subterranean area, and a requisition is put in for a jackhammer. (The Marines do not have jackhammers.) They move on to the other warehouses, which are also empty - but, like the others, show signs of recent occupation and a hasty retreat: the offices are in disarray, phones have been removed from walls, file cabinets stand empty.

Day Four: while half of the team works on the floor plate, the other half demands access to the low-slung buildings described in the Iraqi documents as “investigative facilities.” These are one- and two-story windowless structures with central air conditioning units and many ventilation apertures. The Iraqi official in charge of the building says it is was used for administrative and research functions - the government does admit this was a scientific installation, but they worked on synthetic fertilizers.

All of the rooms are locked; the Iraqi liaison does not have the key. He goes to search for the key while the inspection team radios base with the situation. Under the guidelines spelled out by the UN resolution, the Iraqi behavior has not yet risen to the level that would justify force. The details of the situation will be passed up the UN chain of command to see if additional stalling might justify reprisal, and what sort of reprisal that would be; bombing is clearly out of the question, but the team might be allowed to temporarily detain the Iraqi liaison while a protest is lodged.

The Iraqi returns; he cannot find the key. The team spends the rest of the afternoon taking the doors off manually. The rooms appear to have been used for some sort of scientific purpose - there are special fountains for washing eyes, and ventilation hoods in every lab. The rooms smell of bleach.

Meanwhile, the team at Warehouse 4 has discovered that the plate hides a trough used for changing oil on the installation fleet; it had been sealed when a new oil-changing bay was built in warehouse 6. This team is now reassigned to the labs.

Day Five: work continues on the building the inspectors now dub “the bug lab.” Since several the labs are connected, and these doors are unlocked, inspectors are able to explore the building quickly. They find no evidence of biological or chemical weapons.

Day Six: Bug Lab Two looks like the other one; also deserted, also smelling of bleach. There are marks in the floor consistent with the removal of equipment, but the nature of the equipment cannot be ascertained. The warehouses are clear.

Day Seven: the barracks are cleared. Stupendous amounts of porn are confiscated.

Day Eight: the barrel field. Inspectors hope to open all 400 barrels and dump out the contents, but since the facility is near a residential area, fears of contamination quash that notion. The barrels are taken to one of the warehouses; an airtight tent is set up, and the barrels are examined one at a time. They contain petroleum products. Transport and inspection consumes two days.

Day Ten: all other inspections are complete, except for the Mosque. It is an uncharacteristic structure - much newer than the others, with fresh paint. The inspectors demand access; the Iraqi official refuses, citing the condition against inspection of religious sites. (This was the sole condition Iraq insisted upon, and got; there were many editorials in the West applauding the Administration for being sensitive to this particular cultural differences, although some British newspapers noted that American fundamentalist churches are still permitted to encourage the parishioners to bomb abortion clinics.)

The inspectors insist that this prohibition applied to religious sites in residential areas, not on government facilities. The Iraqis refuse access; the Marines subdue them and enter the facility.

That evening Al-Jazeera broadcasts a tape supplied by the Iraqi government, shot from a distance; it shows American troops pulling Iraqis away from the mosque and subduing those who protest with rifle butts; it shows American troops kicking down the doors to the mosque and pouring in, guns drawn.

Inspections are suspended for a week while the Iraqis renegotiate the issue of religious facilities on bases.

And the VX the labs had produced six months before are now in a DC apartment, waiting for the email that gives the go-ahead.

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Of course, this is all fanciful conjecture, but you get the point. The only way anyone can assure that a facility doesn’t currently contain WMD is to tear the thing apart - and even then that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t making or storing something a few days, or weeks, or months, or years ago.

The pro-inspections argument seems to believe that if inspectors don’t find anything, this means Iraq doesn’t have anything.

Others might take reassurance from that. I don’t.