Iraq war a fight vs. world terror

The attacks of 9/11 have nothing to do with the war in Iraq, say some congressional critics of President Bush's speech this week urging the citizenry to have patience with efforts to quell an insurgency so that a liberated people can govern themselves.

But, of course, the main reason we are in Iraq and the main thing keeping us there is what we learned through the dramatic, murderous foreshadowing of the attacks four years ago - that Islamic-fascist terrorists could bring an end to American civilization.

The fiction propagated by war opponents has been that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. So relentless has their campaign of half-truths and misconceptions been that huge numbers of Americans have forgotten that Saddam Hussein did have ties with terrorists, that he was a reckless mass murderer with hatred for the United States and that he planned to reconstitute a weapons capacity that could do us devastating harm.

True, he did not collaborate on 9/11, as best we know. But his representatives had meetings with al-Qaida representatives' and he supported suicide-bombers killing Israelis, among many links with terrorists.

His invasion of Kuwait and refusal in 2002 to comply fully with U.N. weapons inspectors show he would stupidly risk war with the United States to further his ambitions. True, again: No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the invasion, but U.S. inspectors did find programs that could have enabled Saddam to put together chemical WMD quickly, and they found, too, that he was working to end sanctions so that he could try once more to develop nuclear weapons capable of taking out whole cities.

It requires an extraordinary deficit of imagination, in my view, to see the Saddam peril as somehow discontinuous with terrorism. If we had once more let him slip past a U.N. resolution; if he had been able to proceed with his bribes of France and others to get out from under sanctions; if we had decided a spineless, corrupt, genocide-abiding United Nations would be our security, we would as much as have told him, "Go ahead, get back at us, have your fun, develop your weapons, give them to terrorists, watch while they do their damnable thing to us."

As witnesses for my concerns, if not my arguments, I call two Harvard professors, one of whom is Graham Allison, who has predicted that terrorists will detonate a nuclear bomb within the next 10 years, perhaps reducing the U.S. population by a half-million people, and the other of whom is Michael Ignatieff, who says such a catastrophe would give us a national-security state in which trust has been tossed to the wind and the idea of rights abandoned.

Thanks to our war in Iraq, Saddam is gone. But should congressional talk of an "exit strategy" lead to a premature evacuation of U.S. forces from that land, then a tiny minority of insurgent assassins could replace hope for a sane, sensible, humane parliamentary government in Iraq.

Beyond that, it could put Saddam-like men in power - America-hating, terrorist-led, fascistic true believers whose happiness would be most complete with America's downfall.

The 9/11 attacks were a wake-up call to apocalyptic possibility, and the worst thing would be to go back to sleep.

That bears repeating ~
Solid Editorial Opinion!

In the fall of 1994, Baghdad's official press, in essence, threatened that Saddam might use his remaining unconventional agents, biological and chemical, for terrorism in America, or in missiles delivered against his enemies in the region if and when he became fed up with sanctions.

Al-Quds al-Arabi, a London paper financed by Baghdad and close to the Iraqi regime, cautioned: "Iraq still has options. But they are all destructive options. Yet if the Americans continue to humiliate them, they will have no option but to bring the temple down on everyone's head."

General Wafiq Samarrai, former head of Iraqi military intelligence, predicted that Iraq would not give up any more unconventional agents. Instead, Saddam would probably employ them for blackmail and brinkmanship to get sanctions lifted. And failing that, he would use them.

"Tell the allies that they have to destroy Iraq's biological agents before Saddam can use them." Iraq could attack its neighbors by missile, or America through terrorism. The United Stares might retaliate with nuclear weapons, but by then "the disaster will already have happened", Samarrai warned in a 1995 telephone interview with Laurie Mylroie.

The pic is from on or near March 26, 2003 ~

"Marines find 9/11 mural with "Iraq Airlines" planes crashing into Twin towers"

"U.S. Marines searching Iraqi military headquarters in this southern city that was the site of intensive fighting came across a mural depicting a plane crashing into a building complex resembling New York's twin towers, a news agency photograph showed Wednesday.

"The plane's logo and coloring resembled that of Iraqi Airlines, said Getty Images News Service executive Brian Felber, based in New York.

"The photograph, showing two rifle-toting Marines in front of the mural, was shot by staff photographer Joe Raedle, who is accompanying the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force from Task Force Tarawa."

It seems to me that those who want to insist that Saddam and his regime were not in any way connected with 9/11 or its Al Queda perpetrators, ought, at very least, admit that they were really big "admirers" of the 9/11 attacks and the 19 Islamist hijackers.

The 9/11 attacks were a wake-up call to apocalyptic possibility, and the worst thing would be to go back to sleep.

And we had been asleep, many on the left would like for us to go back to sleep.

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Unholy Alliance
by David Horowitz
Regnery Publishing, Inc.; ISBN: 089526076X
Hardcover - 256 pages (September 2004)

In this tour de force on the most important issue of our time, David Horowitz, confronts the paradox of how so many Americans, including the leadership of the Democratic Party, could turn against the War on Terror. He finds an answer in a political Left that shares a view of America as the “Great Satan” with America’s radical Islamic enemies. This Left, which once made common cause with Communists, has now joined forces with radical Islam in attacking America’s defenses at home and its policies abroad. From their positions of influence in the university and media culture, leftists have defined America as the “root cause” of the attacks against it. In a remarkable exploration of the “Mind of the Left,” Horowitz traces the evolution of American radicalism from its Communist past to its “anti-war” present. He then shows how this Left was able to turn the Democratic Party presidential campaign around and reshape its views on the War on Terror.

Horowitz’s Unholy Alliance, writes John Haynes, the noted historian of American Communism, “is an insightful, brilliant examination of the mental world of the radical left. Horowitz shows how today’s radicals, unwilling to reflect on the internal flaws that destroyed Marxism-Leninism from within, have embraced an all-consuming nihilism in its place. This has led them to a hatred of American institutions and a solidarity with Islamic terrorists that makes the radical left more properly regarded as dangerous than loony.”

Unholy Alliance is an eye-opening book that should unsettle conventional assumptions and reveals why intellectuals and political leaders who applaud Michael Moore are no laughing matter. As Harvey Klehr, author of Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, writes, “The world Communist movement may be moribund, but its habits of mind and ideological fantasies have not disappeared. This is a fascinating and depressing account.”

Price: $19.01 - Click here to order:

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