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10-11-2004
It’s time, once again, ladies and gentlemen, for the Monday morning quarterbacking show, ‘Iraq And
The War On Terror, After The Fact.’ First up on today’s show is a comment from the Senate Committee on Armed Services
ranking Democrat, Michigan Senator Carl Levin, one of the most partisan politicians to ever preside in the Senate.
The
report from the Bush administration appointed top United States arms inspector in Iraq, Charles Dueler, has now been released
and the results have Democrats talking so fast they sound as though they have been sucking on helium. Senator Levin commented
on findings in the report saying that no ‘stockpiles’ of WMD were found in Iraq and that fact contradicted pre-war
assertions made by the administration. He added, “That is 180 degrees different from what the administration was saying
prior to the war.”
Maybe someone should have informed Senator Levin that it is also 180 degrees different from
what John Kerry and John Edwards were saying prior to the war. But more to the point, why does he refer to ‘stockpiles’
of WMD. Many Democrats, like John Edwards, still claim that there were ‘no WMD in Iraq’.
Maybe that is
because WMD has been found in that country and the report for which Levin was using to level his attacks on the Bush administration
said that Iraq had ‘destroyed virtually all of it’s biological and chemical ordinance.’ That’s right,
Saddam destroyed virtually all, but not all of his WMD and dismantled most of, but not all of his weapons producing programs.
The
report also included interviews with Saddam during which he admitted his intent to continue his efforts to acquire these weapons
as soon as he could and was already in the process of doing so after defying weapons inspections and spending money he garnered
through conspiratorial activity with corrupt partners as part of the United Nations ‘Oil-for -food’ program on
his military and research and development of WMD.
You remember those countries, don't you? They would be the U.N. countries
who didn't feel the need to remove Saddam from power: France, Germany, and Russia and have now been discovered to be in the
pocket of Saddam at the time. They would also be the countries John Kerry thinks can provide the U.S. with a 'global test'
to prove we can protect our sovereignty.
Next on today’s show, Senator Edward Kennedy from Massachusetts. Senator
Kennedy was clearly irritated by the testimony of weapons Inspector Charles Dueler where the inspector testified about Saddam’s
desire to acquire WMD and that he, “Clearly had ambitions with respect to weapons of mass destruction,” and that
with Saddam in U.S. custody, “Analytically, the world is better off.”
Senator Kennedy charged in a typically
red-jowled retort, “We were told that Saddam already had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that he could
acquire nuclear weapons in a year, which he could then give to terrorists. That’s what we were told.”
Senator
Kennedy probably doesn’t know how right he is on this. The President said, “That would open a window of opportunity
for Iraq to rebuild it’s arsenal of weapons and delivery systems in months--I say again, in months--not years. A failure
to respond could embolden Saddam to act recklessly, signaling to him that he can with impunity develop these weapons of mass
destruction or threaten his neighbors, and this is very important in an age when we look forward to weapons of mass destruction
being a significant threat to civilized people everywhere.”
Pretty strong words coming from the President of
the United States about Saddam and the WMD and weapons programs we now have no evidence to corroborate existed. Oh yeah, one
thing about that statement, it was President Bill Clinton who said that, so it's good to see Senator Kennedy being non-partisan
and 'consistent'!
What did one of our highest level members of the Senate Intelligence Committee say about this subject
back in 2002? John Kerry himself said, “That it’s the actual weapons of mass destruction he [Saddam] may use against
us. It’s what he may do in another invasion of Kuwait or in a miscalculation about the Kurds, or a miscalculation about
Iran or particularly Israel... He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups.”
What
weapons Senator Kerry?
Remember, here on, ‘Iraq And The War On Terror, After The Fact’, we can use anything
you have said beforehand against you after the fact while we Monday morning quarterback about the issue. But I’ll be
nice to Senator Kerry on this because I’m sure he wasn’t really up to speed on the intelligence data back then
since he had missed so many of the intelligence committee meetings he was supposed to attend.
Finally, let’s
ponder the indelible intellectual reverie of columnist E.J. Dionne. He wrote about how during the Cheney/Edwards debate, Edwards
charged that Cheney keeps suggesting a connection between Iraq and 9-11, yet Cheney returned that he has not suggested a connection
between the two.
Dionne then comments, “This is the same Cheney who, just minutes before, in the very same debate,
had defended the attack on Iraq by declaring flatly that Saddam Hussein ‘had an established relationship with al Qaida.’
Hello? If that is not a ‘suggestion’ of a connection, what is?
Here’s an example of a suggestion,
Mr. Dionne seems to have the chronic disorder of cranial rectal disease! What Vice President Cheney said concerned two separate
entities based on statements of fact, not suggestions of a connection between them. The only suggestion is in the minds of
intellectually superior Liberals who think they have the omnipotent power to know what someone is saying without that person
having said anything.
Just for Mr. Dionne’s benefit and anyone who agrees with him, 9-11 was a tragic event that
happened in America and Al Qaeda is a group of Islamic terrorists operating around the world. It has already been established
that Al Qaeda was connected with Iraq before the war by several commissions... Iraq, however, did not coordinate the attacks
on 9-11 with Al Qaeda.
Engagement of the War on Terror does include Iraq and Al Qaeda, so it is a fact that if we
are fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq we are destroying the organization responsible for perpetrating the attacks of 9-11 and stating
that fact doesn’t ‘suggest’ that Iraq is connected to 9-11.
With all these genius Monday morning
quarterbacks in the media, you'd think that at least one of them would have by now explained to the American electorate just
what exactly John Kerry's plan for the War on Terror is. We know he has a plan, we just don't know... oh, I see, we'll find
out what that plan is... after the fact!
Lee P Butler
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