Posted on 07/18/2003 9:30:54 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The Truth About Iraq
The question of Iraqi weapons is a no-brainer. The difference between war and peace is a matter of capability and intention. Saddam Hussein had both.
Saddam holds the official record for most kills with nerve gas and most Muslims killed in the second half of the 20th century. Saddam used nerve gas against Iran during a long and bloody war that cost nearly a million lives. Saddam even used nerve gas on his own people.
The question of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction should be presented to Iran. Iran has the most experience with Iraqi WMDs. Clearly, over 500,000 Iranian dead is gruesome evidence that Saddam had the capability and the desire to use WMD.
The U.S. operations in Afghanistan and two wars in Iraq total to only a fraction of the dead racked up by Saddam. The most conservative estimate is that Saddam Hussein killed 2 million people, 1 million in his own country and another million fighting wars with his Arab neighbors.
Russia, France, Germany and China
Iraq did most of its killing using Russian-made MiG and Sukhoi aircraft equipped with chemical sprayers. In addition, Saddam used French-made artillery and helicopters to dump gas on the Iranians and his own people. The nerve gas and mustard gas were manufactured inside Iraq by facilities constructed by Germany.
After the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was forced to reveal that it had armed SCUD warheads, Sukhoi jets and some rocket artillery with chemical weapons and anthrax.
The Iraqi WMD effort continued during the 1990s. The Iraqi Air Force modified its multimillion-dollar French Mirage F-1 fighters to carry chemical sprayers in violation of the U.N. arms embargo. One does not modify a Mach 2 strike fighter to spray for fruit flies and Saddam certainly did not plan to spray French perfume over Kuwait, Israel and Iran.
In addition, Iraq continued to seek advanced missile technology from foreign sources prohibited by the U.N. Security Council. In 2000, a Chinese delegation from the Shangdong Arts and Craft Company visited Baghdad. Curiously, the visiting delegation from Shangdong was made up of Chinese army officers and ballistic missile engineers.
Iraqi Missile Force
The fact remains that Iraq demonstrated that it violated the provisions of U.N. sanctions on weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was forced to destroy nearly a hundred missiles before the war because Hans Blix found that they exceeded the maximum range set down by the U.N. Security Council.
In addition, Iraq illegally modified Russian-made FROG-7 missiles with an up-rated engine and a second-stage system. Iraq fired several of these modified missiles during Operation Iraqi Freedom that exceeded the maximum range of 150 kilometers set down by the U.N. Security Council. One Iraqi missile traveled well over 200 kilometers, falling into the Gulf.
Pundits say that the difference between 150 km and 200+ km is of no importance. Pundits rarely check the map, however. The range increase can be measured by the difference between falling harmlessly in the western desert of Jordan and landing squarely in heavily populated Israel.
World War III
Saddam threatened to use chemical weapons against Israel during the first Gulf War and repeated that threat as late as 2002. Israel took these threats very seriously by placing IAF strike aircraft on "pad" alert, ready to fly over downtown Baghdad on a moment's notice.
While many leftists dismiss the Iraqi threat to Israel as a non-issue, the fact remains that a single strike at Tel Aviv would certainly have resulted in World War III. Saddam could have started a world war in the Middle East with millions dead, a total Arab oil embargo to the West and a war raging on for years.
Today, Saddam has gone the way of Elvis sightings and his threat to disrupt world peace is gone as well. The Israeli air force has removed its pad alert aircraft and decided to retire several squadrons of strike jets. Israel made it clear that the alert aircraft and strike jets were no longer needed because the threat of war had receded.
We, too, have stood down. The U.S. Air Force has removed the strike fighters in Turkey and Saudi Arabia previously stationed in the Gulf region to cover Iraq. The U.S. Navy is making plans to remove a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier from the Gulf region and transfer the warship to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Lying Under Oath
Despite the overwhelming evidence that the war against Saddam was the right thing to do, Democrats and liberal pundits continue to recite the Carville spin machine mantra. Which is worse, sputters the far left, lying about sex or weapons?
The victory in Iraq has already proven that President Bush was right. America and the world are a safer place without Saddam Hussein. Anyone who is betting that Saddam was a good global citizen and destroyed all his WMD systems is a sucker ready to part from his money.
Of course, it is true that Bill Clinton took lying to new heights. Still, Clinton's lie was not the infamous TV claim that he "did not have sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton's lie was made under oath in front of a federal judge.
Chief Judge Susan Webber Wright of the federal court in Arkansas imposed sanctions on Clinton for having "violated the Court's discovery orders by giving false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process."
Wright's ruling was based on her earlier finding that Clinton's testimony "was intentionally false."
"It simply is not acceptable to employ deceptions and falsehoods in an attempt to obstruct the judicial process," stated Judge Wright.
According to Wright, she imposed the sanctions "not only to redress the misconduct of the President in this case, but to deter others who might themselves consider emulating the President of the United States by engaging in misconduct that undermines the integrity of the judicial system."
Lying About Nukes
However, if lying about weapons is still high on your list, then please note that there is a mountain of evidence that the Clinton administration lied about North Korean missile and nuclear weapons development. The White House lies were executed in order to cover up Clinton's foreign policy mistakes in Asia and his personal opposition to a national missile defense.
The Clinton effort to lie about the North Korean threat included pressuring the CIA to issue false and misleading data. For example, a declassified CIA report supplied by the Clinton administration to Congress estimated that North Korea would require 10-15 years to develop an ICBM capable of delivering a chemical, biological or nuclear warhead.
The 1998 Rumsfeld report, however, concluded that "There is evidence that North Korea is working hard on the Taep'o-dong 2 (TD-2) ballistic missile. The status of the system's development cannot be determined precisely. Nevertheless, the ballistic missile test infrastructure in North Korea is well developed. Once the system is assessed to be ready, a test flight could be conducted within six months of a decision to do so."
In addition, the Rumsfeld report concluded that "light-weight variations of the TD-2 could fly as far as 10,000 km, placing at risk western U.S. territory in an arc extending northwest from Phoenix, Arizona, to Madison, Wisconsin."
In August 1998, Clinton's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Shalikashvili went to Capitol Hill and testified under oath that North Korea did not have the capability to launch long-range missiles.
Two weeks later, North Korea fired its Tae Po Dong missile over Japan, dropping a simulated nuclear warhead off the U.S. coast.
Clinton continued to maintain the fiction that North Korea was not developing nuclear weapons, lying to America and our Asian allies right up to his last days in office.
"For several years, we have been working with our East Asian allies to improve relations with North Korea in a way that strengthens peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. We have made substantial progress, including the 1994 Agreed Framework, which froze North Korea's production of plutonium for nuclear weapons under ongoing international inspections," noted Clinton in a December 2000 press release.
Wrong Then and Now
The lies being spun by the far left are weapons of mass deception. The hysterical left opposed the war against Iraq, predicting tens of thousand of U.S. casualties. They were wrong then; why should we believe them now?
The left continues to blame America for the attacks of Sept. 11. The left continues to defend Saddam in a suicidal effort to protect the dictator. The left wants America to disarm because they are certain that the United States is the real threat to world peace. They are still wrong.
Bill Clinton shares these views and told a long series of lies to America in order to protect his personal self-interests.
The left will never admit that the difference between good and evil is in the man. It takes a brave man to tell the truth while a coward can tell a thousand lies. Our current national leader did not candy-coat or gloss over the bad news. Instead, Bush told America the truth about Saddam.
Not true, Saddam use mustard gas on Iran, Iran use nerve gas on Iraq.
???? Ehhh, this newsmax is stupid. WW3? How? Regional war isreal/arabs yes, WW3? Soviet Union not attack America during previous wars, why Russia do this? Why China do this? Stupid analysis...almost as bad as idiots at debka and pravada.
Nobody wants Saddam back [Excellent]
Townhall.com ^ | July 18, 2003 | Amir Taheri
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