I agree with Rafe Colburn’s comments in rc3 about The Great Terror, Jeffrey Goldberg’s long New Yorker article to which I’d been meaning to blink. Largely an investigation of Iraq’s use of chemical and biological warfare against its own Kurdish population, it has attracted much attention for a secondary focus — Goldberg’s interviews in Kurdistan established an ostensible link between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda. In so doing, the article will surely influence the debate about whether attacking Iraq has any justification relative to the W-o-T®. Goldberg asks over and over in the article why no one else in the European or American press has written about the sequelae of the Iraqi attacks on the Kurds. I would turn that question on its head and ask, why now? Without wanting to create the impression I’m turning a blind eye on genocide, was the timing of this piece influenced perhaps by the Government That Never Lies to Us, which has closed its Disinfo Office because of the public outcry… Addendum: Just as it was taboo after 9-11 to wonder too publicly whether anything in US foreign policy had contributed to terrorist ire at us, as if raising such questions dishonored the memory of those who died that day or blamed the victims, such questions about the possible bias and the timing of the Goldberg piece have been called thoughtless and insensitive. Clearly, I think they are neither…