An incessant assault on the president through editorials about the unnecessary, unilateral, illegal invasion of Iraq by America continues throughout the main stream media. Many leading liberal democrats, specifically Ted Kennedy, keeps referring to Iraq as Vietnam, rhetoric the leaders of Iraqi insurgents have begun to use to incite the rebels so they will continue to attack our troops.

All the while, some of the members of the 9-11 commission feel the need to grandstand when the light on the camera informs them that what they are about to say will be broadcast around the globe. Bob Kerrey gave a touching speech to Dr. Rice saying that he thought America was going to fail in Iraq and wed probably never see stability there.

On Oct. 19, 2000, the same Bob Kerrey announced on the Senate floor, "I hope we will direct the anger and desire for vengeance we feel [for the attack on the USS Cole] away from Yemen and towards Saddam HusseinI can think of no more fitting tribute to the 17 sailors lost on board the Cole than completing our mission and helping the Iraqi people achieve freedom and democracy."

Here is a former Senator who says he supported the war in Iraq, yet derides the very engagement of our military that's trying to achieve his own intended goal using the bully-pulpit of his status on whats supposed to be the most important panel of investigation of our time.

Whats more intriguing about this is the fact that as democrats continue indicting the President with allegedly focusing on Iraq in the wake of the 9-11 tragedy, a member of that investigative committee actually announced on record that his first inclination was that we should not go after the terrorists who attacked America multiple times before 9-11, but Iraq.

Remember, it has been expounded by the elite media that it was republicans; especially President Bush, who had forced Americans to believe that there was a connection between 9-11 and Iraq through their wily use of innuendo.

We were told the 9-11 commission was designed to garner all the information they can put together to be used to better implement the future war on terrorism, but it seems to have become a tool thats being used to politically attack every single member of the Bush administration so they will just confess to being coerced by that simple-minded Texan to forget about al Qaeda and get to the business at handIraq! Why, Haliburton needs more business!

For just a moment lets step off the train of this conflicting saga so we can juxtapose what many in the media and liberals keep pontificating about Iraq with the tragedy of 9-11 to see if whats being said is intellectually honest?

Keep in mind the two main arguments currently being used by liberals and many in the media against the liberation of Iraq: the WMD Saddam used to kill his own people liberals keep asserting president Bush lied about were non-existent because they have yet to be found and though Saddam was a bad guy he didnt pose a threat to anyone.

For the benefit of this exercise put aside the knowledge of the seventeen UN resolutions, the fact that Saddam has killed more Muslims than anyone, that he was paying homicide bombers to kill Israelis, that he had harbored members of al Qaeda, the acts of rape and torture, the starvation and ultimate deaths of thousands of children each year with the help of Russia, Germany, France, and the UN through the exploitation of the UNs Oil For Food program, or Saddams purchasing of illegal weapons and military equipment from those same countries.

Many leading democrats through the Nineties into 2001 warned repeatedly that one of our, if not the biggest, threat to America came from Saddam Hussein, not Osama bin Laden, while during that time most if not all of the attacks incurred by this country were from al Qaeda. Why then was it wrong for President Bush to authorize Operation Iraqi Freedom, after destroying the Taliban regime and severely damaging the operations of the al Qaeda network?

The most important information to be gleaned from the 9-11 commission; besides Jamie Gorelicks deceptive conflict of interest, has been that countries have to accept a more aggressive preemptive approach to prevent or defeat terrorism.

It can only be intellectual dishonesty for some to claim the president made a mistake by not taking immediate action against al Qaeda based on the Presidential Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, which was requested by him about terrorist threats in America and simply reiterated a three year old threat about possible hijackings the FAA had already been warned about and the recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York, about which the FBI reported to have been working on 70 different operations.

Then to assert he also made a mistake by ordering a military strike against a known terrorist who had openly threatened America and our allies many times in the past and was purported to have WMD and possible nuclear capability at his disposal by none other than Clinton, Gore, Kerry, the UN, and mounds of intelligence data to support their rhetoric.

We now know 'after the fact that' Saddam may not have been as big a threat to America as our intelligence data showed him to be. We also now know 'after the fact' that Osama bin Laden was a greater threat to America than our intelligence data led us to believe. Making decisions 'in the future after the fact' sounds like a Kerry campaign slogan, but its not an option in the war on terrorism. Staying aggressive is our only choice.

Pray for our troops, their success will one day be recognized as our freedom, because Iraq is important in the war on terrorism even though some won't realize it until after the fact.

Lee P Butler