Steve Martin on the Meaning of "Have"

I love it. The question "Does Iraq have WMDs?" has naturally evolved into "Did Iraq have WMDs?" because of the fall of Saddam's regime. Interesting how both Bush and Blair have taken advantage of this shift to remove the "immediate danger" aspect from their justificatory war rhetoric. They both now say things like, "WE know they *did* have WMDs because they gassed the Kurds". Yes, we do know that. We knew it in 1989. But if all current policy was based on what was going on in 1989, we'd have to invade Russia, wouldn't we?

Well actually it's a bit more subtle than that now. The question has become "Did Iraq have a WMD program?" Some officials even admit to not being sure. This is in keeping with the new 'candour program'. Got that from Doonesbury.

In Danish "have" (pronounced heh-vuh) means garden. Looking for WMD at the bottom of the have. Worth a try, I suppose.

I think the coalition got mixed up... maybe WMD sounds like 'socks' in arabic.

This is quaint. I agree... I wonder what the next addition to whether Iraq did or did not have WMD's or not may be. It seems to be forming a completely different question from the original question. I'm actually glad that we attacked Iraq and ousted Saddam Hussein. We should kill the tyrannical dictator along with Arafat, Osama Bin Laden and others. But our justification for the war was WMD. That was wrong. I thought they did have WMD, but I was mislead. Either way, at some future point Saddam Hussein would have gotten weapons of mass destruction or nuclear weapons since that would ensure that the U.S. would not attack Iraq. For Iraq with nuclear weapons, mutual destruction is not an issue. The author I find prophetic is actually C.S. Lewis who predicted that people would say the opposite of what they were actually thinking or doing in order to give a good face to an evil thing. THE THING THAT I find most annoying about politics nowadays is the idea that we are really at the end of history... that capitalism is the apotheosis of all economic systems and will bring about a new age where nations no longer need to go to war, only economic war. But our economic wars are leading to real life wars, whether with Iraq or perhaps other states like Columbia or even a non-state like Palestine. So war-mongering Bush and his team justify their wars based on the idea that they are waging wars to end wars. Once Communism was also thought of the system that would end all of history so that there was no future for countries like Czechloslovakia and others. As Milan Kundera writes, communism made no compromise with the traditions of the country and blasted away at the idea of the future. It was the future, but it did not come from the past or the present. So that people were living schizophrenic lives, the past, private self based on family, friends, and traditions and the future, public mask of being a good comrade, turning in elements of the past that were considered to be evil to the state. I think it was Susan Sontag who made the comment that in the paintings of a famous American painter (Willem De Kooning), there was very little content... there's nothing private. His paintings of women and other people are about what is done to these women from the outside. Capitalism with its emphasis on competition, individuality, and victory has completely done away with the private content of a life lived outside the domains of the work place. Communism with its historical determinism has also done away with the private history of the individual life. So the way I see it, language does not matter to George Bush and his team. It's only use is lighten the weight of the actions that they have already pre-emptively decided to take