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NEW: SMOKING GUNS ARE STILL BEING SUPPRESSED
(Are they still yielding intelligence?)
WHY IT WAS WORTH IT
First of all, Saddam Hussein was a dictator who had his Iraqi operatives try to assassinate a former President of the U.S. Those facts alone are grounds enough to retaliate. Second of all, Iraqi intelligence operative Ramzi Yousef was eventually found to be involved in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, despite the extreme measures Iraq took to hide its involvement (although after that attack, Saddam sheltered Yousef's co-conspirator Abdul Rahman Yasin). Grounds enough again. Thirdly, Iraq fired upon our aircraft enforcing the UN-mandated no-fly zones virtually every day. Ditto. Finally, Iraq kicked the weapons inspectors out and failed to comply with the UN's requirements to specify precisely what they did with their WMDs. Not to retaliate for such outrages is both immoral and an encouragement of more of same.
Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat, not only provided aid, comfort and refuge to the most violent worldwide assassins and terrorists, it also supplied financial and logistical support and personnel as aides. See The Secret History of the Iraq War.
In October of 1998, during the Clinton administration, the U.S. House and then the U.S. Senate passed The Iraq Liberation Act, which was signed into law on Oct. 31st, making it the official policy of the U.S. government to seek regime change in Iraq. The Senate vote was unanimous, including every Democrat, even Ted Kennedy.
On 9/11 it was logical to suspect, and even assume, that Iraq was involved in this second World Trade Center attack also. A lot of assuming had to be done since the CIA's Operations Directorate had largely been destroyed by Sen. Frank Church and the Carter administration in the 1970s, driving out most of our really skilled, brave, wise and dedicated operatives (leaving mostly short-sighted, small-minded, butt-covering, turf-protecting outcome-scorning, deskbound bureauweasels instead) and our intelligence capabilities were even further crippled by the Clinton administration in the 1990s (Still, ignorant and politically-motivated people blame the Bush administration for the intelligence failures even though it had only been in office 8 months prior to 9/11). Besides, there were plenty of other threats from Iraq and from the region in general to counter and defuse anyway. In fact there are several pro-active strategic reasons for the U.S. to take up military positions in Iraq, only one of which is the extremely delicate task of stopping the flow of middle east oil money, even from Saudi Arabia, to international terrorists and terrorist recruiters and trainers (hopefully to be achieved more by intimidation than by actual additional military action) -- without massive disruptions to the American economy. Anyway, copious amounts of proof -- that Iraq still had WMD capabilities and an active interest in WMDs, AND had numerous links with terrorists including Al Qaeda -- have been uncovered in the wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Some of that information is covered in the links below.
Even though the 9-11 Commission was badly compromised by the presence of Clinton administration intelligence-crippling "wall" builder Jamie Gorelick on it, its report did, at least, document some of the links and contacts Saddam had had with Al Qaeda and other terrorists, as John Gibson summarizes here.
An Iraqi Newspaper Named All 3 9/11 Targets BEFORE 9/11.
Listen to THIS ABC-NEWS audio clip from BEFORE 9/11! SAVE it to disk!
Prominent Democrats (and even Chirac) were also sure of Saddam's WMDs
"The idea that our motive for going to war with Iraq has turned out to be misguided is dead wrong. Saddam not only had weapons of mass destruction and the ability to produce them at short notice, but he also had the will and the motivation to give those weapons to third parties such as al Qaeda to use against the West. The decision to take him out was, and remains, the correct one." -- Mr. Ramsbotham
Now, exactly WHO is lying about Iraq?
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| "The burden of proof was on Saddam, not the United States. George Bush did not have the burden of proving that Saddam [still] had WMDs. Saddam Hussein had the burden of proving he didn’t have them [any more]. Saddam failed to meet the burden of proof ... and paid the price." -- Neal Boortz. |
Remember the SIX MONTHS it took for the U.S. to get a UN go-ahead for Gulf War Part II? Do you really think Saddam didn't use them to hide WMD's? Wanna buy a bridge?
Now GUESS WHO tipped off Saddam's allies 6 months BEFORE WE EVEN WENT TO THE U.N.? |
| "in order to be in the Democratic leadership fraternity ... [you] must conveniently ignore that no matter what 20/20 hindsight may reveal after the fact, reasonable people agree that Saddam had WMDs, used them on his own people, had a legal obligation to prove he'd disposed of them and failed to meet that burden, choosing instead to submit a 12,000-page document of lies. You must flagrantly disregard the inconvenient, but undeniable fact that Saddam could have prevented an American attack if he'd complied with his treaties, cooperated with weapons inspectors and proven he'd disposed of his WMDs as required. By flipping us off instead, he invited the War." -- David Limbaugh |
Of Course Saddam Had WMDs; The Left Couldn't Care Less
The Soviets supplied, helped hide, & publicly denied, Iraq's WMDs
The Untold Story: It was the CIA who set up Joe Wilson & Plamegate
Now WHO is the REAL liar using INTENTIONAL deceit?
Former Senator Zell Miller puts Plamegate in perspective
The CIA's Disinformation Campaign
The phony Niger-Iraq uranium reports came from pre-planned Libyan deception operations (and people fell for it, especially those in the enemedia):
"It is now known absolutely that Libya’s External Security Organization (ESO), under the control of Moussa Koussa, who was the primary link to the US and British intelligence services 'innormalizing' Libya’s relations with the US and Britain, produced and delivered the forged documents to the Italian military intelligence organization, SISMI, for onward passage to the US. At an appropriate time, the Libyans ensured that the fact that the documents was forged was leaked to the Director-General of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed El-Baradei, who then attacked the US assumptions on the Iraqi nuclear program by stating that the documents on which the US based its assessments were forged." |
Nerve gas components found near Baiji
LORIE BYRD'S Roundup of "MUST-READS"
Canadian Reporter Finds Saddam-bin Laden Link
FOUND: a Saddam-Al Qaeda "Smoking Gun"
Saddam had 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium
The Clinton Administration linked Al-Qaeda with Saddam
MORE Al Qaeda - Saddam links shown here & here
Captured documents reveal Saddam's terrorist training camps
Ramzi Yousef worked for BOTH Iraq's Mukhabarat AND Al-Qaeda
A partial list of the WMDs found in Iraq >>> The sources for that list
UNMOVIC head tells Security Council WMD material was moved outside Iraq
Iraqis were taped discussing "evacuating" material prior to a weapons inspection.
Disinformation by Richard Miniter
Why George Bush couldn't have lied
The phrase "Bush lied" is ITSELF a lie.
The Fedayeen - al Qaeda Connection
Fedayeen supervised Al Qaeda training
WMD materials removed from 109 sites
Czech surveillance noted Atta meeting Iraqi official
Ex-Iraqi intelligence officer ties Saddam to al-Qaeda ally
al-Tikriti memo details uranium shipment, Atta's Iraq training
Saddam's stockpiles of WMD raw materials HAVE been found
Al Qaeda-financed WMD factory used peculiar Iraqi bio-weapons formula
UNMOVIC inspectors: Saddam Shipped Out WMDs
New evidence: Saddam's WMD in Lebanon
Saddam had WMD on 'short notice'
9 Iraqi scientists murdered
The OTHER "Downing Street Memo" of July 2002 (which NEGATES the first one)
See excerpts from The Secret History of the Iraq War HERE
Jordanians say they stopped a major Al-Qaeda attack WITH WMDs mounted from Syria: See THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS and: THIS.
"So, after the fall of Afghanistan at the end of 2001, Zarqawi and other al Qaeda veterans made their way to Iraq, where, secure under the wing of Saddam Hussein, they plotted chemical weapons attacks on countries friendly to the U.S., as well as the murder (successfully carried out) of an American diplomat. And yet, to this day it remains an article of faith on the left that Saddam's Iraq was a kite-flyer's paradise with no connection to international terrorism, no relations with al Qaeda, and, of course, no chemical weapons. Maybe the current trial will reveal where the chemicals assembled for the attack on Jordan came from; maybe it won't. But we don't need any new information to understand that Saddam's regime protected and supported the deadliest of al Qaeda's terrorists." -- John Hinderaker, HERE
See: "IRAQ'S COMPLICITY IN TERRORISM" HERE
Al Qaeda videos found in Iraq weapons raid
Bad Samarratans - caught between Iraq and a hard place
Kuwait foils smuggling of bio warheads from Iraq
Danes think they might have found chemical weapons
Iraqi Missile Parts Found in Holland
"The evidence [of Saddam's moving his WMD to Syria from August to December of 2002 and his collaboration with Al Qaeda] is overwhelming."
-- Yossef Bodansky, Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and author of The Secret History of the Iraq War
Saddam Possessed WMDs, Had Many Terror Ties
"Saddam ... maintained secretive weapons programs throughout the 1990s and indeed right up until the day of the invasion, and that he was only waiting for the international community to lose interest or stamina so that he could resume his programs unfettered. This is the well-documented, unrefuted -- and unnoticed -- conclusion of both [chief inspectors] David Kay and Charles Duelfer."
-- Robert Kagan, Washington Post, June 19, 2005
"Duelfer also reported that Saddam asked subordinates how long it would take to develop chemical weapons once sanctions ended. One Iraqi chemical weapons expert said it would require only a few days to develop mustard gas." -- Michael Barone, HERE
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"The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe -- because no one else could be such a fool." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell HERE.
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It's a war of IDEOLOGY|| ||"We are in a fight to the death."||||Death-Worshippers||||Required Reading
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The ONLY issues that must be settled before ANY others: 1. Do you want the axis of evil to continue developing and spreading nuclear weapons? & 2. Do you want lots more of the world's oil reserves and oil income to fall into the hands of Muslim terrorists? Hmm? Everything ELSE at this time is just fighting over deck chairs on the Titanic.
"When the planes flew into the World Trade Center, that was iron-clad proof. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, that was iron-clad proof. We cannot wait for iron-clad proof in a nuclear age." --Thomas Sowell, HERE
"... when you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him."-- FDR
"If you hate my guts and have designs to hurt me, and I see you building a cannon aimed at my house, I am not going to wait for you to finish construction." --Walter E. Williams
"It's obvious to me that this country is rapidly dividing itself into two camps: the wimps and the warriors. The ones who want to argue and assess and appease, and the ones who want to carry this fight to our enemies and kill them before they kill us." -- Sen. Zell Miller
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| What G.W. should have said about why we attacked Iraq |
I would have been much happier if G.W. had the intellectual clarity and moral courage to have told the American people after 9-11:
"I will ask Congress for either an overt declaration of war, or at least a tacit one through the approval of its funding, not only on the stateless terrorists who perpetrated this heinous act, but on all nations who harbor and/or help them, the worst among these including Syria, Iran, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. No country should be allowed to get away with any such thing ever again, whether they harbor terrorists, support terrorists, or actually come under the control of terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. And we cannot allow those countries with nuclear weapons or huge streams of oil income to remain vulnerable to terrorist takeover, for that would surely lead to Armageddon. We should not attack most of those countries right now for various strategic, tactical and economic reasons, but what we can do is scare the living crap out of them by showing we're not just going to lob a few cruise missiles somewhere and go home. What we can and must do is to pick an illegitmate government -- any rigidly totalitarian government other than Afghanistan's -- somewhere in their neighborhood and effect a complete and total demonstration of what will happen to THEM if they don't cooperate fully in tracking down and stopping these terrorists once and for all. Iraq not only fills that bill, but it just so happens to be one whose leader has attempted to assassinate an American ex-president, and one for which the Congress has already passed a law, The Iraq Libertation Act of 1998.
"Finally, if any government anywhere STILL sponsors, nurtures or harbors terrorists which endanger the United States, or combines weapons of mass destruction with any barbaric or insane ideology, we will stop at nothing to bring that government and that threat to a complete and permanent end."
Update: The transcript of the President's 2005 Veteran's Day Speech is HERE. |
As the Wall Street Journal editorialized, "The more we show we're serious about challenging states that harbor terrorists the more Pakistan and other nations are likely to cooperate with Washington in tracking down and turning over the terrorists." And indeed they have. As bad as the U.S. has gotten over the years, becoming more and more twisted by a government of the politicians, by the politicians, and for the politicians, it is still blindingly obvious that it's a lot more humane and civilized than anything those Muslim fundamentalists or Baathist control freaks can even think about, let alone have to offer. If anyone's pacifism has its roots in, or amounts to, beliefs that "all cultures are equal," they hold their views as blind idealogues, not far-sighted defenders of liberty. If anyone still doubts that I believe any legitimate country has the right to do any damn thing to any illegitimate country any damn time it needs to, I would refer him to this: "Just as an individual must act unapologetically to preserve his life, so must America. America must proudly proclaim its right and intention to protect its citizens, their liberty and their property. It must meet any threat with retaliation that pre-empts loss of American lives." HERE -- and to this: "Any doctrine of group activities that does not recognize individual rights is a doctrine of mob rule or legalized lynching... A nation that violates the rights of its own citizens cannot claim any rights whatsoever. In the issue of rights, as in all moral issues, there can be no double standard." -- Ayn Rand, here
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THE BUSH DOCTRINE
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"I never regarded WMD as the main reason to go to war. The real reason to go to war was (1) to establish a military and democratic presence in the Arab world (which we've done); (2) to make an example of Saddam to intimidate other Arab leaders (which we've done); and (3) to cut off Saddam as a source of support -- both existing and potential -- for terrorists, which we've also done. The WMD was a nontrivial issue, and required for playing the UN game (which I always regarded as a mistake) but not, to me, the most important issue."
-- Glenn Reynolds, HERE "The objective is to scare the hell out of the world, generally, and Islam in particular. By means of a minimal effort at wreaking maximum havoc upon Iraq in a very short span of time, the United States will demonstrate to her enemies and allies alike that she is not only the pre-eminent world power, she is in fact an inconquerable power. The anticipated benefits in the Islamic world will be either an immediate rounding-up of terrorists, or swift regime-changes followed by an immediate rounding-up of terrorists." -- Greg Swann, HERE In October of 1998, during the Clinton administration, the U.S. House and then the U.S. Senate passed The Iraq Liberation Act, which was signed into law on Oct. 31st, making it the official policy of the U.S. government to seek regime change in Iraq. The Senate vote was unanimous, including every Democrat, even Ted Kennedy.
"For states that support terror, it is not enough that the consequences be costly; they must devastating." -- George W. Bush, Dec. 11, 2001
Despite the insistence of various Democrats, butt-covering diplomats and other vacillators that it had to be due to years of international cooperation in (fruitless) sanctions and diplomacy, Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi made it clear that he decided to disarm due to our terminating the regime in Iraq, NOT Afghanistan: "I will do whatever the Americans want because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid," Gaddafi told Italy's Prime Minister Berlusconi here& HERE. Gaddafi urges rogue states: 'Follow my lead!' HERE. |
"Why is it that when the NYT and Judy Miller mis-reported the WMD threat, they made 'mistakes,' but when Bush turns out to (arguably) be wrong on the exact same topic and in exactly the same way, he told 'lies?'" -- Dave Gamble
"When nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, progressive opinion was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom and the handful of us who survived would be walking in a nuclear winter wonderland. Now anyone with a few thousand bucks and an unlisted Islamabad number in his Rolodex can get a nuke, and the left is positively blasé." -- Mark Steyn |
"Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property -- by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort." -- Ayn Rand
"In other words, letting the Saudis take over our oil companies' oil fields in the '40s and '50s and the Arabs and Persians everywhere else every other time were ENORMOUS mistakes of epic proportions. They should serve as the greatest demonstration of how mysticism, altruism, cultural agnosticism and moral relativism, which supplied the feeble rationalizations for doing so, are TOTALLY inimical to Western Civilization and its very existence, and why they must be rejected once and for all. Enabling the paying of billions of dollars in unearned royalties to those who finance, if not actually believe in, primitive barbarism and manifest mysticism is unspeakably evil, nauseating and tantamount to treason taken to the most extreme degree imaginable." -- B.R.
"Mysticism -- as a cultural power -- died at the time of the Renaissance. ... As to altruism -- it has never been alive. It is the poison of death in the blood of Western civilization ..." -- Ayn Rand, HERE.
The perfidy of the UN
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