Posted on 11/17/2004 8:05:47 AM PST by Luis Gonzalez
Take the Marine off the line and put Sites in his place.
So here we are, three years after 9/11; well into the war with the beasts. The election is over. President Bush has a mandate, while the political Left and their media minions got the proverbial pink slip from red county America in response to their 16-year moratorium on brains. Nevertheless, not willing to withdraw with grace, we have two new non-scandals from the Left regarding the War on Terror. As if the aforementioned issue were not absurd enough, the Left is apoplectic at NBC's release of in bed video showing a US Soldier shooting an enemy combatant. Imagine that.
In light of televised beheadings, hundreds of dead children, daily massacres of Iraqi civilians by foreign Islamicist insurgents, burned and mutilated Americans on public display in that very same city and its own torture brothels, the incident at Abu Graib seems more like an episode of Fear Factor. Likewise in close-quarter combat in a third-world urban nightmare, with an enemy whose netherworld value is calculated by the number of infidels he slaughters, shooting that enemy combatant in the battlezone should be quite sequitur. The non comes in when you add the action and the analysis of a the Mainstream Media anti-war activist and the inane sensibilities of progressives with respect to this particular event.
Saddam Hussein started this war in 1990 when he invaded Kuwait; we just finished it.
Naturally, people like yourself want to ignore pesky little facts like that, and history becomes fuzzy in your head.
This war was sanctioned by the United Nations after Saddam refused to comply with their deadline for a peaceful withdrawal of troops from Kuwait.
The war never ended, Saddam signed a cease fire agreement which called for his complete disarmament, and verifiable proof of the same.
He failed to comply with the conditions of the UN cease fire agreement, and the consequent sixteen resolutions issued by the UN Security Council over the following twelve years; the UN Security Council additionally issued a total of 30 statements between 1991 and 1998 detailing Saddam's continued violations of the UN Security Council Resolutions.
Additionally, in 1993 then President Bill Clinton ordered the US military to act alongside French and British and launch several air strikes and missile striked against Iraq in response to Saddam's continued provocations, including a plot to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush. An Iraqi troop build up near the Kuwaiti border in 1994 was answered when President Clinton ordered US troops moved to Kuwait and nearby areas.
As for your second point about the war in Iraq not being a part of the greater War on Terror, here's some information people like you conveniently ignore:
Iraq is one of seven countries that have been designated by the Secretary of State as state sponsors of international terrorism. UNSCR 687 prohibits Saddam Hussein from committing or supporting terrorism, or allowing terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq. Saddam continues to violate these UNSCR provisions.
- In 1993, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) directed and pursued an attempt to assassinate, through the use of a powerful car bomb, former U.S. President George Bush and the Emir of Kuwait. Kuwaiti authorities thwarted the terrorist plot and arrested 16 suspects, led by two Iraqi nationals.
- Iraq sheltered terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), which had used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians.
- Iraq sheltered several prominent Palestinian terrorist organizations in Baghdad, including the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), which is known for aerial attacks against Israel and is headed by Abu Abbas, who carried out the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered U.S. citizen Leon Klinghoffer.
- Iraq sheltered the Abu Nidal Organization, an international terrorist organization that carried out terrorist attacks in twenty countries, killing or injuring almost 900 people. Targets included the United States and several other Western nations. Each of these groups had offices in Baghdad and received training, logistical assistance, and financial aid from the government of Iraq.
- In April 2002, Saddam Hussein increased from $10,000 to $25,000 the money offered to families of Palestinian suicide/homicide bombers. The rules for rewarding suicide/homicide bombers are strict and insist that only someone who blows himself up with a belt of explosives gets the full payment. Payments were made on a strict scale, with different amounts for wounds, disablement, death as a "martyr" and $25,000 for a suicide bomber. Mahmoud Besharat, a representative on the West Bank who handed out to families the money from Saddam, said, "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue."
- Former Iraqi military officers described a highly secret terrorist training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.
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