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Saddam Had WMDs; The Left Couldn't Care Less (May 19, 2004)
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13438 ^ | May 19, 2004 [Because The Left Forgets] | Frank Gaffney Jr.

Posted on 11/15/2005 10:44:04 AM PST by conservativecorner

One could be forgiven for thinking that the detonation of two "improvised explosive devices" equipped with toxic chemical agents would be seen as confirmation that there are still Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. These events might even be seen as rebuttals to those who have derided the Bush administration for its prior inability to substantiate pre-war claims that such weapons in Saddam’s hands constituted an intolerable threat to the United States.

Unfortunately, such thinking fails to appreciate a stand-by of Washington Beltway politics: "moving the goalposts." Whenever the opposing team comes close to proving its point, one simply relocates the end zone to a point out of reach.

Rarely has this phenomenon been more in evidence than with respect to Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. Practically everyone – members of the Coalition’s intelligence services, the United Nations, even the French, Germans and Russians – recognized that, at one time, Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and a program for building nuclear devices. Since he never satisfactorily accounted for the complete destruction of the stocks of WMDs, like those he previously used in lethal attacks on Iran and his own Kurds, the only reasonable conclusion was that they continued to exist in some form, in unknown quantity.

To prove the point, one would seem to need only to have found a few chemical and/or biological weapons. Well, that would appear to have been the incontrovertible upshot of the two recent episodes, involving sarin and mustard gas weapons. Yet the goal-post-movers’ response has been that these do not – in and of themselves – confirm the claims that Saddam still had stockpiles of these sorts of WMDs.

UN inspectors – whose return to Iraq in 2002 was only made possible by President Bush’s determination to disarm Saddam, one way or the other – shed no more light on the question. That did not, however, keep then-Chief Inspector Hans Blix from suggesting that there was no evidence Iraq still had active WMD programs.

To disprove this contention, it would seem sufficient to establish that chemical and biological production facilities continued to exist, perhaps in the form of advanced fertilizer or pharmaceutical plants which, thanks to the dual-use nature of their technologies, would allow them readily to be used for weapons purposes. And the Iraq Survey Group, a team of specialists that has been scouring Iraq since the fall of Baghdad trying to ferret out and secure Saddam’s WMDs, has confirmed that, while actual weapons have eluded them so far, the ancien regime did indeed have the ability to produce fresh batches of chemical and biological agents at will. Yet the skeptics choose to ignore the reality that, in the wrong hands, even small amounts of such toxic substances – precisely what could be manufactured in short order by this sort of stand-by production capability – could cause immense loss of life.

No less studiously ignored is evidence that has come to light that Saddam Hussein could, indeed, have handed Weapons of Mass Destruction to terrorists bent on employing them against the United States and its allies. As Charles Smith reminded us in Newsmax.com yesterday, "(F)ormer Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen testified that in 1998 Saddam's top nerve gas experts met with several members of al-Qaeda in Baghdad."

Recent events underscore the danger such a combination represents. Smith notes that just a few weeks ago, a number of al-Qaeda operatives based in Iraq were caught before they were able to carry out a plot aimed at killing tens of thousands of Jordanians with poison gas. Evidently, the failure to perpetrate such an atrocity permits some to persist in the fantasy that this aspect of the WMD case against Saddam is still without foundation.

Whether partisan Democrats, antiwar zealots and rabid Bush-haters wish to admit it or not, Saddam Hussein is guilty as charged. We now know that Saddam once had significant quantities of Weapons of Mass Destruction and aspired to build more; he used them against his own people and his neighbors; and he persisted in violating nearly two-score UN Security Council resolutions – right up to the end of his days in power – by concealing his actual programs and capabilities.

It is now safe to conclude as well that Saddam bequeathed a frightening legacy to post-liberation Iraq: the Weapons of Mass Destruction still at large in Iraq. The alternative thesis – namely, that the only two WMDs left in the entire country were employed in the (fortunately) failed IED attacks involving sarin and mustard gas conducted in recent days – is preposterous on its face.

While we may still be in the dark as to where all of the remaining WMDs are – their specific condition and numbers – these attacks should serve indisputably to establish that there are at least some WMDs in-country and accessible to terrorists. Moreover, the Jordanian near-miss underscores the point that we should take no comfort from the fact that the status of such weapons is unknown, since some of them may wind up being used outside Iraq.

It is entirely understandable that those who opposed the war with Iraq and/or President Bush for launching it would try to make hay of the difficulty we have had to date locating quantities of WMDs that former chief inspector David Kay once said would fit in a two-car garage, while searching a country the size of France. Now that we have begun to find them the hard way, it behooves such critics to stop moving the goal-posts, to recognize the validity of Mr. Bush’s concerns and to throw their support behind the urgent effort to find and destroy such weapons – wherever they may be, including possibly in neighboring Syria – before any more of them are used against us...inside Iraq or outside.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 109th; iraq; prewarintelligence; wmd

1 posted on 11/15/2005 10:44:05 AM PST by conservativecorner
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To: conservativecorner

Agreed, but we had this debate 2 and three years ago. We shouldn't be playing on their field. Syria and Iran should be the focus, stop playing defense republicans.


2 posted on 11/15/2005 10:47:42 AM PST by Williams
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To: conservativecorner

ping for later


3 posted on 11/15/2005 10:53:55 AM PST by TNdandelion
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To: conservativecorner
This is not about WMD's, The Democrats are using this as an political point. If we found WMD's in large quanties buried in the sand, the Democrats would complain they were planted there by Bush.

They are using any excuse to attack Bush, and get there power back.
4 posted on 11/15/2005 10:55:11 AM PST by SFGI (Liberator of the Oppressed)
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To: conservativecorner

bump


5 posted on 11/15/2005 10:58:39 AM PST by Christian4Bush (Howard Dean would declare DNC victory after winning a game of rock/paper/scissors.)
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To: SFGI


John Kerry says:

Only Racist, Sexist, Homophobes don't vote Democrat. And his is an open minded, nonjudgemental opinion - so he has to be right.


6 posted on 11/15/2005 10:59:30 AM PST by Tzimisce
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To: Williams
The administration has consistently failed to make its' case since winning the resolution to attack Iraq. The Dems and their media lapdogs continue to get traction with the "lies, no WMD" rants.

The administration doesn't point out the tons of uranium (potential dirty bombs), the .8 tons of enriched uranium (potential nuclear weapon, the sarin and nerve gas shells, and other clues that were found.

They also fail to trumpet David Kay's testimony before Congress, in which he said, after the WMD search, he felt Saddam was "more dangerous" than realized, and that taking Saddam out was exactly the right thing to do.

Now, no one wants to hear about Iran and Syria, due to the ongoing browbeating over "lies, and no WMD." The record must be set straight.
7 posted on 11/15/2005 11:00:19 AM PST by SaxxonWoods
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To: Williams

We wouldn't be doing this exercise if anyone at the WH or RNC were doing their jobs. Tell a lie long enough and it becomes truth to the masses.


8 posted on 11/15/2005 11:02:01 AM PST by conservativecorner
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To: conservativecorner

BUMP!


9 posted on 11/15/2005 11:09:30 AM PST by Publius6961 (The IQ of California voters is about 420........... .............cumulatively)
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To: conservativecorner

The dems must be laughing their lying asses off about GOP weakness. Here we are arguing about Dem lies instead of advancing the agenda and ignoring the Dem lies, except to snort contemptuously at them.


10 posted on 11/15/2005 11:33:31 AM PST by Defiant (Dar al Salaam will exist when the entire world submits to American leadership.)
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To: SaxxonWoods

I agree with you 100%. It has always been said the administration does not have a good program for dealing with the media, or with the Congress. That is comong back to bite them. I'm beginning to worry that real national security initiatives are suffering, such as on Iran. I can only hope the administration isn't playing turtle in teh real policy world.


11 posted on 11/15/2005 11:47:18 AM PST by Williams
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To: Tzimisce
Please pass this along , spread the word.


Hi Tzimisce


I got a very interesting article from another Freeper that exposes the lies of the Democrats/Liberals/MSM and those of the " Political Correctness " crowd.
I told Freeper ( defconw ) that I will do my best to help spread the word, and send this to as many people as I can.
We need to organize now to counter the Liberals lies, Democrats lies, MSM lies, not only the lies that they are trowing at President Bush and his administation, but, against all Conservatives/Republicans, and most important, those who love America.
We need to shout this from the roof tops.
Please send this to as many people as you can.



Re: The Tony Snow Show, Thursday, November 10, 2005 From defconw | 11/10/2005 12:33:51 PM PST replied


Check this out.


Unmasking Political Correctness by William S. Lind
In this edition,
Paul Weyrich refers to

"cultural Marxism."

He asked me, as Free Congress Foundation's resident historian, to write this column explaining what cultural Marxism is and where it came from.
In order to understand what something is and what to do about it, you have to know its history.
Cultural Marxism is a branch of western Marxism, different from the Marxism-Leninism of the old Soviet Union.
( It is commonly known as

"multiculturalism"


or, less formally, Political Correctness. )


From its beginning, the promoters of cultural Marxism have known they could be more effective if they concealed the Marxist nature of their work, hence the use of terms such as

"multiculturalism."

Cultural Marxism began not in the 1960s but in 1919, immediately after World War I.
Marxist theory had predicted that in the event of a big European war, the working class all over Europe would rise up to overthrow capitalism and create communism. But when war came in 1914, that did not happen.
When it finally did happen in Russia in 1917, workers in other European countries did not support it.
What had gone wrong?
Independently, two Marxist theorists, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary, came to the same answer:
Western culture and the Christian religion had so blinded the working class to its true, Marxist class interest that Communism was impossible in the West until both could be destroyed.
In 1919, Lukacs asked, "Who will save us from Western civilization?" That same year, when he became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun government in Hungary, one of Lukacs's first acts was to introduce sex education into Hungary's public schools.
He knew that if he could destroy the West's traditional sexual morals, he would have taken a giant step toward destroying Western culture itself.
In 1923, inspired in part by Lukacs, a group of German Marxists established a think tank at Frankfurt University in Germany called the Institute for Social Research.
This institute, soon known simply as the Frankfurt School, would become the creator of cultural Marxism.
To translate Marxism from economic into cultural terms, the members of the Frankfurt School - - Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Wilhelm Reich, Eric Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, to name the most important - - had to contradict Marx on several points.
They argued that culture was not just part of what Marx had called society's "superstructure," but an independent and very important variable.
They also said that the working class would not lead a Marxist revolution, because it was becoming part of the middle class, the hated bourgeoisie.
Who would?

( In the 1950s, Marcuse answered the question: a coalition of blacks, students, feminist women and homosexuals. )

Fatefully for America, when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Frankfurt School fled - - and reestablished itself in New York City.

( There, it shifted its focus from destroying traditional Western culture in Germany to destroying it in the United States. )

To do so, it invented
"Critical Theory."
What is the theory?

( To criticize every traditional institution, starting with the family, brutally and unremittingly, in order to bring them down. )

It wrote a series of

( "studies in prejudice," which said that anyone who believes in traditional Western culture is prejudiced, a "racist" or "sexist" of "fascist" - - and is also mentally ill. )

Most importantly, the Frankfurt School crossed Marx with Freud, taking from psychology the technique of psychological conditioning.
Today,

( when the cultural Marxists want to do something like "normalize" homosexuality, they do not argue the point philosophically. )

They just beam television show after television show into every American home where the only normal-seeming white male is a homosexual (the Frankfurt School's key people spent the war years in Hollywood).
After World War II ended, most members of the Frankfurt School went back to Germany.
But Herbert Marcuse stayed in America.
He took the highly abstract works of other Frankfurt School members and repackaged them in ways college students could read and understand.
In his book "Eros and Civilization," he argued that by freeing sex from any restraints, we could elevate the pleasure principle over the reality principle and create a society with no work, only play (Marcuse coined the phrase, "Make love, not war").
Marcuse also argued for what he called

( "liberating tolerance," which he defined as tolerance for all ideas coming from the Left and intolerance for any ideas coming from the Right. )

In the 1960s, Marcuse became the chief "guru" of the New Left, and he injected the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School into the baby boom generation, to the point where it is now America's state ideology.

( The future goal of conservatism must include unmasking multiculturalism and political correctness and tell the American people what they really are: cultural Marxism. )

( Its goal remains what Lukacs and Gramsci set in 1919: destroying Western culture and the Christian religion.)

It has already made vast strides toward that goal.
But

( if the average American found out that political correctness is a form of Marxism, different from the Marxism of the Soviet Union but Marxism nonetheless, it would be in trouble.

The next conservatism needs to reveal the man behind the curtain - - old Karl Marx himself.
William S. Lind is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism of the Free Congress Foundation.

The Free Congress Foundation's website,
www.freecongress.org,
Includes a short book on the history and nature of cultural Marxism, edited by William S. Lind.
It is formatted so you can print it out as a book and share it with your family and friends.
12 posted on 11/15/2005 12:03:54 PM PST by Prophet in the wilderness (PSALM 53 : 1 The FOOL hath said in his heart , There is no GOD .)
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To: Williams
we had this debate 2 and three years ago.

This debate occurred on FreeRepublic, but not really within the mainstream media. The reason we find ourselves playing defense now--as verified by today's poll numbers--is that Bush refused to play defense then when it was necessary. Time for Bush to trash the New Tone and replace it with a spine and a communication and leadership strategy.

13 posted on 11/15/2005 12:09:33 PM PST by PeoplesRepublicOfWashington (Dream Ticket: Cheney/Rice '08)
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To: Prophet in the wilderness

That article should be required reading. It's so blatantly apparent that the Dems have abandoned putting up any smokescreens to cover their true agenda. Dean practically admitted it this Sunday. "Critical Theory" is their agenda. Listen to Quinn and Rose 104.7FM Pittsburgh radio for all the latest examples of Cultural Marxism.


14 posted on 11/15/2005 12:17:25 PM PST by oneofmany (Don't Tread On Me)
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To: oneofmany

The dems are STILL admitting they thought there were WMD's, then they switch the subject and deny they agreed on one detail, or claim only Cheney made a certain claim. It's very riduiculous and they need to be called out on it by articulate spokespeople. This is our national security at stake.


15 posted on 11/15/2005 1:36:24 PM PST by Williams
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To: Tzimisce

That is why he lost!


16 posted on 11/16/2005 12:23:41 PM PST by SFGI (Liberator of the Oppressed)
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