Iraq, anthrax, and the hawks. (Comment).

It didn't take long for the hawks to seize on the anthrax scare as a justification for the United States to go bomb Iraq.

"By far the likeliest supplier is Saddam Hussein," The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial on Oct. 18.

James Woolsey, former CIA director, wrote almost the exact same thing in the Journal's adjacent guest column.

Richard Butler, the bellicose leader of U.N. inspections in Iraq during the late 1990s, took to the op-ed page of The New York Times the same day to insinuate that Iraq was behind the attacks: "If the scientific path leads to Iraq as the supporter of the anthrax used by the terrorist mailers, no one should be surprised."

Three things need to be noted about this "Let's Get Iraq" chant.

First, the hawks wanted to Overthrow Saddam Hussein even before any anthrax was delivered.

Second, the evidence against Iraq is not overwhelming.

Third, it makes no sense for Iraq to be behind the anthrax attacks.

To get a glimpse of the anti-Iraq crowd, look no further than The Weekly Standard of Oct. 1. The cover had a WANTED sign on it with two pictures underneath: one of Osama bin Laden, the other of Saddam Hussein.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is the chief advocate of this campaign within the Administration. Joining him on the outside are many has-beens of the foreign policy establishment.

Much of the case for the Iraq connection rests on two claims: first, Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague last year; and second, the anthrax sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was "weapons grade" or "weaponized" and could have come from only the United States, Russia, or Iraq.

Neither of those claims is persuasive.

There are any number of reasons why the Iraqi intelligence agent may have met with Atta. "Almost any intelligence agency has met with Al Qaeda. It's a player in the region," says Erik Gustafson, executive director of Education for Peace in Iraq, based in Washington, D.C. "The Iraqis have some intelligence interest in tracking what Al Qaeda is up to." Gustafson said he's seen some reports that Baghdad may have been pursuing alleged links between Al Qaeda and a militant Kurdish group in northern Iraq. It's also possible, he said, that the Iraqi agent was acting as a rogue, or that he was not fully aware of what Atta was planning on September 11.

And the anthrax evidence does not point directly to Baghdad. Many news stories have reported that a knowledgeable microbiologist with access to a lab could have made the anthrax. Administration officials have been speculating about domestic sources of the anthrax, including the far right.

One piece of anthrax evidence strongly indicates that Iraq was not involved: The type of anthrax used in the U.S. mail attacks, the so-called Ames strain, is one that Iraq doesn't seem to have.

"Federal scientists examining the anthrax used in the Florida and New York attacks have tentatively concluded that it is a domestic strain that bears no resemblance to the strains Russia and Iraq turned into biological weapons," David Johnston and William J. Broad reported for the Times on October 19. "To the best of their knowledge, Baghdad was unable to obtain the Ames strain."

Scott Ritter--the U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 who was a strong advocate for military action against Saddam Hussein in the days leading up to the Gulf War--discounts the Iraq link.

"Fears that the hidden hand of Saddam Hussein lies behind these attacks are based on rumor and speculation that, under close scrutiny, fail to support the weight of the charge," he wrote in the London Guardian on October 19.

Ritter added that "Iraq's biological weapons programs were dismantled, destroyed, or rendered harmless during the course of hundreds of no-notice inspections."

Ritter denounced Butler, his former boss, for climbing aboard the "Get Baghdad" bandwagon. "Those who have suggested that Iraq is the source of the anthrax used in the current attacks--including Richard Butler, a former chairman of the U.N. weapons inspection effort--merely fan the flames of fear and panic," he wrote. "There is no verifiable link whatever, and it is irresponsible for someone of Mr. Butler's stature to be involved in unsubstantiated speculation."

Hans von Sponeck, the head of the U.N. humanitarian effort in Iraq from 1998 to 2000, agrees with Ritter. "To connect the 11 September tragedy and the anthrax crime to Iraq is a malicious attempt to find a justification to attack Iraq to finish what is perceived as `unfinished business,' "he told The Progressive in an e-mail on October 19. "I find these conjectures outrageous."

The Iraq connection, while impossible to rule out, doesn't compute on political grounds. For one thing, as Ritter argues, "It makes absolutely no sense for Iraq to be involved in a bio-terror attack that, in one fell swoop, undermines what has been Iraq's number one priority over the past decade: the lifting of economic sanctions."

And for another, why would Iraq use biological weapons now on just a handful of Americans when it could have used them on tens of thousands of U.S. troops back in 1991? Hussein didn't use the weapons during the Gulf War because Bush the Elder had warned him that the United States would drop nuclear weapons on him if he did. Surely, he must realize that his fate would be sealed if he were tied to the latest anthrax scare. If he were suicidal, which he has shown clearly that he's not, he could have wreaked much more havoc ten years ago.

Finally, Saddam and Osama are anything but a perfect fit. "Saddam Hussein has brutally persecuted his Islamist opposition," says Stephen Zunes, chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.

"We don't have any ideological sympathy with those people," Tariq Aziz, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, told Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes on October 28. "If we catch a Wahabbi activating here in Iraq, we put him in prison and persecute him."

And bin Laden has been no fan of Hussein.

"Last month, Suleiman abu Gheith, a spokesman for bin Laden's [Al Qaeda] organization, was quoted in a Kuwaiti newspaper as saying the Iraqi strongman is a `false God' who should be `punished,'" The Wall Street Journal reported on October 10.

Despite the doubts on Iraq, the pundits and politicians are still screeching for war. George Will banged the drum on ABC's This Week, and Richard Cohen, putative liberal, used his column in The Washington Post to prod the Bush Administration on to Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in 2000, said on Meet the Press that the United States should attack Iraq, and followed that up with a commentary in The Wall Street Journal on October 29. "Whether or not Saddam is implicated directly in the anthrax attacks or the horrors of September 11, he is, by any common definition, a terrorist who must be removed," Lieberman wrote. "A serious effort to end Saddam's rule over Iraq should begin now."

The Pentagon is prepared to do so. "For the first time since the terrorist attacks on September 11, the United States deployed additional forces to bases within easy striking distance of Iraq, senior military officials said," according to an article in the Times of October 7.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave a foreboding response to a question at a press conference two days later. Asked if the United States would be waging war in another country before the anti-terror campaign was through, he replied: "I have no doubt in my mind."

Rumsfeld and Bush are preparing to go to war against Iraq on the flimsiest of evidence.

If they do, they will show the world community how reckless they are.