With decision made, let’s get it done

Oak Lawn (IL) Reporter ^ | 3/20/03 | Michael M. Bates

[mikeb704]

Earlier this evening, President Bush gave Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq. If they don’t, the United States and whatever allies with any guts we can round up will attack.

It’s about time. More than a decade ago the United Nations started passing resolutions demanding immediate Iraq disarmament. Seventeen resolutions later, Hussein still has his weapons of mass destruction. He maintains an array of chemical and biological agents including anthrax and nerve gas.

It didn’t take him long to realize that the UN’s demands were as limp as a French croissant. And with as much testosterone. Saddam has had more to fear from the Dixie Chicks than from the UN’s Security Council.

Anti-war activists assert that all will be well if we only give inspections a chance to work. These folks are advertising their foolishness, something they really don’t need to do.

The inspectors weren’t sent to Iraq, a country roughly the size of California, to try to find Hussein’s weapons. Their job was to verify, with evidence provided by the murderous dictator, compliance with the latest UN resolution requiring Iraq to rid itself of its weapons of mass destruction.

Chief inspector Hans "See No Evil" Blix has distinguished himself as a guy who couldn’t find his derriere with a flashlight. Ironically, by hailing every grudging concession from Hussein as a new signal of cooperation and then burying information demonstrating Iraq’s lack of openness, Blix has helped make military intervention necessary.

Yet we still hear grousing from the President’s critics that the UN can, if given only another chance, blunt the Iraqi threat. The cookie-pushers in striped pants will do the job.

Sure, it may take another dozen years or so, and perhaps a few dozen additional resolutions, and maybe even an extension or two of a few decades, but they will get it done. You can count on it.

This is as vapid a belief as the Leftist refrain of "It’s all about oil." Numerous objective, unbiased observers, including Mr. Saddam Hussein, have advanced this contention.

Purportedly, Mr. Bush wants to conquer Hussein so he can provide his – and, of course, Dick Cheney’s - oil company pals with Iraqi oil. This is but a continuation of his father’s agenda in the 1991 war.

But wait a minute. Don’t these companies already get Iraq’s oil eventually? Why didn’t we seize oil fields a dozen years ago if that was the Family Bush plan?

Some anti-war folks worry that our liberation of Iraq will set off terrorist assaults. Maybe they haven’t noticed, but we’ve already been victimized by terrorist attacks.

I’d much rather that we pay Hussein a visit before he pays our allies or us a visit with his anthrax, VX nerve agent, mustard gas, missiles, chemical and biological munitions and warheads, drones and Scud missiles. And that’s just the stuff Sherlock Blix figured out Hussein still might have.

We shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking attacking Iraq will be a cakewalk. Hussein will let go with everything he’s got. At this point he has little to lose.

Some of our young people will die. Others will suffer serious injury. They know the dangers of their profession, and we are blessed to have such splendid individuals willing to risk themselves to preserve and extend freedom.

Our troops are the best-trained and best-equipped soldiers in the world. We have cutting edge technology that should facilitate hitting targets with precision, thus curbing civilian casualties.

Douglas MacArthur said that in war there is no substitute for victory. Now that a commitment’s been made, we need to go in, achieve our objective decisively, and get our soldiers back home as quickly as possible.

God bless our valiant men and women in uniform. Now is the time to back them and their Commander-in-Chief.

[mikeb704]

Now is the time to back them and their Commander-in-Chief.

No matter what Tom Daschle and the Commiecrats think.