July 22, 2003

There has been an attempt to mislead the American public, but it hasn't come from the White House, it is coming from the news media. If there has ever been a time when the accusation that a liberal media bias does exist, it's blatantly obvious at the present moment in time.

The most egregious aspect of this maelstrom is the fact the allegations against the president are coming mostly from the same people who opposed the war in Iraq and while they are charging that the president lied' and mislead' the country they are lying and misleading the public with their audacious attempts to make a case against him.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That's the now infamous statement from president Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. There is no gray area here, that statement is a fact and the British stand behind their intelligence to this day. The media can spin it like a crocodile trying to get away from Steve Irwin, but the fact still remains that the statement is accurate. Period.

Joe Wilson, the Clinton appointed African delegate who was adamantly against military action in Iraq, was sent to Africa to investigate the British intelligence. He then reported to the CIA that he could find no evidence of a transaction taking place between Saddam and Nigeria and that the document in question about the transaction was probably a forgery.

Yet the liberal media still reports that the document was forged and that Saddam didn't get uranium from Nigeria. Finding no evidence doesn't mean the event didn't transpire; think WMDs. The CIA has reported they think the document was forged, but even they admit there's no evidence to substantiate the claim otherwise. There's your lie folks, coming from a biased media who have accepted the word of Mr. Wilson's slanted editorial in the New York Times as they attempt to perpetuate doubt of the president's veracity.

Okay, so what about the WMDs? Let's see, no evidence of a uranium buy means it didn't happen and no evidence yet of WMDs means they didn't exist, it's a liberal wonderland! Twenty-plus mass graves have been discovered in Iraq and Human Rights Watch estimates there are still over 300,000 people missing, but you wouldn't know it following main stream media reports.

Maybe all of Saddam's WMDs were destroyed in 1998 when Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of an aspirin factory. The intelligence he used to make that decision obviously said the building housed WMDs or was he lying to the American public then to justify his actions?

The intelligence community around the world believed that there definitely were and probably still are WMDs in Iraq, but how exactly can our troops look for them and defend themselves at the same time when they are being attacked daily? The people who were against the liberation of Iraq wanted the UN inspectors to have more time, shouldn't our men and women be given the same opportunity?

As for the link between Saddam and bin Laden, there are daily reports of new information linking the two, but one glaring relation already exists. They were both leaders of terrorist organizations. Since we are in an ongoing war against terrorism it doesn't really matter whether they ever actually made contact with one another or not, by simply being terrorists they were a threat to America.

When it comes to defeating terrorism around the globe, who would you rather have as your leader? A president who thumbed his nose at terrorists for eight years and did nothing or a president who's willing to stand up to them and do whatever he deems necessary to protect America from their threats?

Lee P Butler