Posted on 06/13/2003 11:07:26 PM PDT by OrthodoxPresbyterian
Saturday, May 31, 2003 11:45 a.m. EDT Bush WMD Debacle Prompted by Salman Pak Blunder President Bush shouldn't wait a second longer to introduce Iraqi defectors Sabah Khodada and Abu Zeinab to the American people, and fire whoever it was in his administration who advised him to ignore the defectors' eyewitness accounts tying the Baghdad terrorist training camp Salman Pak to the 9/11 attacks. Instead of relying on evidence that would have dispelled all doubts about making war on Iraq, the as-yet-unidentified presidential adviser counseled Bush to hinge his Iraq war rationale on the threat of weapons of mass destruction, evidence that - so far, at least - has yet to materialize. The blunder has given Democrats their most potent ammunition yet in their bid to unseat Bush in the 2004 presidential election. In an embarrassing series of statements on Friday, Bush challenged reports contending that Iraqi WMDs were still MIA - only to be contradicted by U.S. experts on the ground. "They're wrong, we found 'em," he told reporters in Poland. "We found weapons of mass destruction. We'll find more weapons," the president added. But in a discrepancy that's sure to become the focus of the Sunday talk shows, U.S. intelligence and military officials contradicted Bush's claims. "We were simply wrong" in expecting to find that Iraqi army and Republican Guard units had terror weapons, Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told the New York Daily News. "It's not for lack of trying," Conway explained. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but [the Iraqi WMDs are] simply not there." A lengthy report released by the CIA this week said that two suspected mobile biological weapons labs contained no traces of the actual toxins that would prove they were WMD facilities. Adding to Bush's political humiliation, the British press quotes Secretary of State Colin Powell as fearing even before the war that tenuous WMD evidence "could explode in [our] faces." Even before the news of the contradictory accounts surfaced, Democrats had seized on the fruitless WMD search as evidence that Bush had lied to lead America into war. In one particularly odious comparison, former Clinton adviser Paul Begala charged that Bush's Iraq "lies" were far worse than his old boss's perjury about Monica Lewinsky. "Which is worse: lying about a girlfriend or lying about a war?" Begala complained on Thursday. "There aren't 169 [U.S. troops] dead over Monica Lewinsky," the Democrat strategist added sarcastically. While European and American intelligence services remain convinced that Saddam Hussein had substantial quantities of WMDs before Bush targeted the country as the lead member of the Axis of Evil in his 2002 State of the Union address, delays caused by United Nation's footdragging gave the Iraqi dictator plenty of time to hide or destroy his weapons cache.
Now, after U.S. forces have spent six weeks scouring Iraq in a fruitless search for Saddam's terror weapons, the decision to focus on WMDs has turned into a political nightmare for the White House. Still, boneheaded administration strategists have refused to acknowledge evidence that might still spare the president the his worst political debacle to date - the accounts of two Iraqi defectors who say that, for years before the 9/11 attacks, they helped train al-Qaeda operatives to hijack U.S. aircraft using the tactics employed by Osama bin Laden's kamikazi crews. In an account that would have dispelled any doubts about whether the U.S. was justified in making war on Iraq regardless of whether Saddam possessed WMDs, former Salman Pak instructor Sabah Khodada told the London Observer that Muslim fundamentalist recruits from throughout the Arab world were taught to hijack planes using small knives. "The method used on 11 September perfectly coincides with the training I saw at the camp," Khodada revealed. "When I saw the twin towers attack, the first thought that came into my head was 'this has been done by graduates of Salman Pak.'" Khodada's account is corroborated by a man identified by the Observer only by his code name, Abu Zeinab, a colonel in Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service who also helped train for 9/11-style operations. "One of the highlights of the six-month curriculum was training to hijack aircraft using only knives or bare hands," he told the Observer. "Like the 11 September hijackers, the students worked in groups of four or five." The accounts of the two Salman Pak instructors are further corroborated by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer - a one-time vice chairman of UNSCOM - who said he personally witnessed some of the 9/11 training aboard the parked fuselage of a Boeing 707.
Duelfer told the British paper that the Iraqis even acknowledged that hijacking dress rehearsals were taking place at Salman Pak - but they insisted it was counterterrorism training. "Of course we automatically took out the word 'counter,'" Duelfer explained. The accounts of Khodada, Zeinab and Duelfer are backed by two other eyewitnesses - a third defector and a second U.N. inspector - all of whom testified earlier this year in a lawsuit brought by 9/11 victim families against Iraq. In a May 7 decision that should have been seized upon by the Bush administration - but wasn't - Manhattan U.S. District Judge Harold Baer ruled that the Salman Pak evidence was persuasive enough to tie Baghdad to the 9/11 attacks. It's probably too late for the Bush administration to abandon its WMD argument for going to war in Iraq. And indeed, Saddam's banned weapons may eventually be found. In the meantime, the president needs to quickly focus attention on far more compelling evidence that every American would agree justified going to war - Iraq's role in the worst attack ever on U.S. soil. And just as quickly, Bush should fire the officials whose advice to ignore the Salman Pak connection could conceivably cost him his re-election next year.
Just this year we've extended $15 billion in welfare to African dictators. American taxpayers are, under threat of violence and imprisonment, required to pay tribute to our African lords.
Thank goodness the socialists didn't win.
Examples?
Yes, after their stunning successes in North Korea, Israel, Rwanda, and Iraq it is imperative Americans continue to pay tribute to the UN.
Paul was foolish to suggest we withdraw.
Hmmm.... A lot of what I remember about the War against Iraq had a lot to do with doing right. Was rescuing Kuwait a wrong?
Was asking that the Iraqi thugs to refrain from killing their own people in retribution for rising up after Gulf War I, believing the USA would come to their aid, wrong. ? Did we not erect no fly zones to keep Saddam's regime from murdering their own, with unconventional arms no less?
Has the discovery of mass executions and mass graves left your sense of righteousness unmoved?
How did those torture camps grab you? No WMD there, just some basic issue dungeons, torture chambers replete with meat hooks, batteries, and electrical cables with alligator clips. Oh, did I mention all of the files with pictures and biographical data on their victims they kept? One thing about fascists is they loovve to keep files.
I guess all of those nuclear scientists and bio-warfare experts were on Saddam's payroll because he liked to discuss some of the more esoteric sciences over dinner at one of the palaces.
The efforts of the Iraqi fascists (Did you know the Ba'ath Party was a direct model of NAZIs?) to aerosolize anthrax, no mean task, is reasonably well documented? Do you recall the video of terorist training camps where they were practicing on animals?
I could go on, but how much justification do you think we need to intervene? You have played into the media spin trap and don't seem to recognise it.
I could go on a rant about holier than thou Christians, but I will spare you that tirade because you are a man of your own convictions, your very own individualised and personal, convictions.
Well, since you ask... yes.
If I have hired a Company of Night-Watchmen to defend my own USA-Town... and the Mayor of USA-Town decides to expend Public Monies and the blood of our Towns-men to send the Night-Watchmen gallivanting off in defense of Wahhabist-Kuwaiti-Town... then the Mayor has committed a Wrong in the illicit expenditure of Public Blood and Treasure.
Was asking that the Iraqi thugs to refrain from killing their own people in retribution for rising up after Gulf War I, believing the USA would come to their aid, wrong. ? Did we not erect no fly zones to keep Saddam's regime from murdering their own, with unconventional arms no less?
It is never a wrong to ask a Dictator not to kill his own people.
It is always a wrong for the Mayor of USA-Town to commission the Night-Watchmen to an expenditure of Public Blood and Treasure for which they are not Constitutionally hired.
Has the discovery of mass executions and mass graves left your sense of righteousness unmoved?
Entirely unmoved. The Mass Graves of Iraq are nothing by comparison to those of Rwanda and the Congo.
And yet we did nothing about those. You know why? It is always a wrong for the Mayor of USA-Town to commission the Night-Watchmen to an expenditure of Public Blood and Treasure for which they are not Constitutionally hired.
How did those torture camps grab you? No WMD there, just some basic issue dungeons, torture chambers replete with meat hooks, batteries, and electrical cables with alligator clips. Oh, did I mention all of the files with pictures and biographical data on their victims they kept? One thing about fascists is they loovve to keep files.
I remain -- Entirely unmoved. The Mass Graves of Iraq are nothing by comparison to those of Rwanda and the Congo.
And yet we did nothing about those. You know why? It is always a wrong for the Mayor of USA-Town to commission the Night-Watchmen to an expenditure of Public Blood and Treasure for which they are not Constitutionally hired.
I can continue, if you want.
It comes to this -- the Constitution does not provide any basis whatsoever for the defense of Non-Citizens in Foreign lands, no matter how much we "feel their pain". It's exactly akin to the expenditures of Public Monies on matters of Benevolence and Charity -- it's not ours to give.
The Constitution permits expenditures on National Defense for -- National Defense. No other purpose. "Rescuing Kuwait" IS "a wrong", if you're stealing monies from the US Treasury to do it.
That's why "Salman Pak" qualifies as a legitimate Casus Belli, on both Christian and Constitutional grounds. And that's why none of the other proposed "rationalizations" for War qualify at all.
Well, 50 million frenchmen can't be wrong.
That's a joke. Look it up.
There is an intuitive understanding that a mass murderer, once out from under the thumb of U.N. inspections, will spend the rest of his days making trouble for the U.S. It takes no great brainpower to see that Saddam would have the means and the motive to support terrorism against Israel directly, and against the U.S. indirectly. Fortunately, 60% of Americans agree with me.
FWIW, Saddam never messed with the US at all until we bailed out Kuwait in 1990 (who, incidentally, paid us back by masterminding the 9/11 attacks -- gotta love those Kuwaitis!!)
We may have created this Monster, but howzabout we not create any more? What's wrong with that idea?
Anyway, genocide was the reason for bombing Serbia and we haven't in five years found nearly the number of mass graves we have found in Iraq in five weeks.
True... but Serbia shoulda never been bombed at all... so I fail to see your point.
Saddam was never a "sweetheart". In point of fact, it was our very knowledge that Saddam wasn't a "sweetheart", and would use chemical weapons against Iran, which prompted the 1980's sale of chemical weapons to Iraq for use against the Iranians.
Iran was considered an Enemy (and still is); if we thought Saddam wasn't going to use poison gas against the Iranians, it would have been geopolitically pointless to sell these weapons to him.
No, Saddam was never a "sweetheart". He's always been an SOB; he was just an SOB who never messed with the US at all (and was, in fact, perfectly happy to buy bio-chemical weaponry from us) until after we went to war with him over Kuwait.
and I never knew that Kuwait planned 911.
Well, gee... I guess you learn something new every day.
The mastermind and architect of the 9/11 attacks was, of course, Kuwaiti Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (You'll remember the grizzly-looking Al-Qaeda VIP we captured last year). Just as most of the actual shock-troops were Saudi Arabian.
Remind me again why we ever bothered to protect these corrupt Wahhabist slave-ocracies?
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