Monday, July 17, 2006
World War III? Risking peace
Newt Gingrich said what we all fear: "We are in the early stages of
what I would describe as the third world war."
The former Speaker of the House and possible Republican candidate
for president explained on NBC's "Meet the Press" what he described
as the theaters of this war, North Korea's test missile, terrorist
bombs in India, continued war in Afghanistan and the threats
against Israel from the alliance of Iran, Syria, Hamas and
Hezbollah.
Gingrich warned of a Puget Sound calamity. "You know, before the
show, we were talking about Seattle and the extraordinary port
facility there. Can we risk losing San Francisco or Seattle? Can we
risk -- I mean, people don't -- if nuclear weapons and biological
weapons didn't exist, we would not be having this conversation," he
said. "But people have got to come to a core grip here. When, when
the Hart-Rudman Commission reported in 2001, it said, in March,
'The greatest threat to the United States is a weapon of mass
destruction going off in an American city, probably from
terrorists.' "
We don't agree with all of Gingrich's assessment, but we worry that
this, indeed, could be the beginning of wider
conflicts.
