The last email...

It's a long letter, and posted primarily for those who liked the first one. It's the last personal email on the subject, for what it's worth.

** 1.) Saddam was NOT a friend to the terrorist factions. Despite all the digging of FOX news to desparately tie the
** terrorists to Saddam, they found nothing. No training camps, no records, nothing. They hold up Zarquawi and
** say "look he's in Iraq so there must have been a tie". Garbage. Who's to say that he didn't come into Iraq
** after the US came in. I don't remember FOX News saying in week 1, "a terrorist leader in Iraq has made a
** statement". Statements about Zarquawi in Iraq came nearly a year after we invaded.

Saddam was not a friend to anyone. He killed quite a few of his own relatives, and would do anything that he perceived would advance his hold on power. So would his most bitter enemies, the Iranians.

Someone wiser than I once said that in this world there are no permanent friends- only permanent interests. Unless Americans can begin to understand this, then their naivety will destroy them.

We were great friends with the Iraqis and the Iranians in the 1960's and 1970's. At the risk of offending- so what?

The Japanese were not friends with the Germans, the Russians or the Italians in World War 2, and had in fact been our allies in World War 1! No wet, sloppy kisses were exchanged by any of them. The Russians and the Germans had slaughtered each other until the Armistice! But from shortly after the end of World War 1, in the early 1920's, as I have wearily pointed out repeatedly, the Russians decided that they could "deal" with the Germans, bloody enemies or not, and so conspired with them to thwart the League of Nation's embargo against Germany developing any more weapons of mass warfare.

Because, just like the Iraqi's and Iranians know, the main difficulty attached to making chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, is that of learning how to do it without pesky interruption.

The first biological weapon, and the technology necessary to produce, weaponize and deploy it, will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The second... a few dollars, and the third a few dollars, etc. Many "interests" exist in the Middle East and throughout the world, which "virulently" desire to possess biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

They are weapons which in their finished form can cause tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of deaths, in a single attack. More importantly to certain interests- they can be handed to surrogates in the hopes that the actual attacker will be the only one to bear guilt, and since he or they, are suiciders and already dead, the matter ends there.

As to this idea that it is "ridiculous" that Saddam would ever provide weapons to the terrorists, whom he bitterly opposed- I must admit that the idea is every bit as silly... as suggesting that he would fly the remainder of his Air Force to Iran- his even "more bitter enemy" whom he fought for 8 years. And we all know how ludicrous that idea would be.

Who do YOU think are re-inforcing this idea in the minds of totalitarians worldwide, that we, as a people, are too stupid to recognize our perils when we see them? It doesn't matter that this idea is wrong- the damage will already be done, and the retaliation will be massive. A number of Marines are dying to provide a chance that it will not come to this. Those persons in the United States who are working actively against the Marines and the United States will pay for their actions. Like the plotters who intend to hand off the actual weapon to "the enemy of my enemy", they will pay.

That a political party of the United States, the Democrats, would expose the existence of the very intelligence mechanisms which not only protect us all, and additionally work to forestall and prevent the day when we are forced to retaliate with nuclear weapons, is so unspeakable as to defy the imagination.

It may even be that some Americans are despicable enough that they applaud the exposure of our intelligence assets, thinking that if we cannot determine who is plotting against us, we not only can't prevent the attacks, but we also cannot retaliate due to lack of confirming intelligence. Yet I'll bet that, like the infamous Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg of the Post WW2 era, they, in some sick recess of their minds actually justify and self-glorify in what they are doing.

When these weapons begin going off, those Americans who now insist that the war on terrorism is not really a war at all, but merely an ongoing police investigation, and who insist that the only prosecutions to be done need take place with attorneys present, under liberal rules of evidence, the same bill of rights enjoyed by American citizens, and the suppression and exclusion of all other evidence frowned upon by the Ninth Circuit Court and Patrick Leahy- will find out what the phrase "the white hot anger of the mob" means close up.

Their wealth and status will unquestionably be forfeit. Americans have suffered long under the depredations of such despicable men, but when our families and cities are destroyed, all such cute torture of common sense will end.

But all of this presupposes that the persons to be persuaded have any real interest in evaluating the arguments being made.

Those persons who don't quite accept the seriousness of what we face, insist on separating all of the persons who attended the lynching into:

...and somewhere in the vast array of people who lynched the man- perhaps someone, somewhere,... actually did something wrong. But without sufficient evidence... what's a court to do? It's a shame that once they had as much warning that the Sheriff's men were coming,(as had Saddam Hussein, thanks to the delay and obstruction of the French, the Germans and the Russians), that they, like the Iraqis, didn't see fit to leave a lot of damning evidence laying around for the Sheriff's men. Shame on them- that's cheating! Points lost. Poo poo we pout.

Must be that the Iraqi War minister, who admitted to the frankly uninterested world's cameras recently, that several plane-loads of the most important weapons material was flown into Syria, was simply lying. Must be that all of those empty, underground, hardened weapons storage facilities were... uh... actually built to grow, er, mushrooms in them! Yeah, that's the ticket! Mushrooms...

Must be that when Saddam's son-in-law defected to the West, a couple of years back, and exposed to the world the ongoing Iraqi nuclear and chemical programs, the very exposure which started the cat and mouse game between the inspectors and the Iraqis... that he really, uhhh, was revealing a childhood lack of attention, and in a pathetic bid, "acted out in a desparate cry for attention from his parents". Yeah, that's the ticket.

And when Saddam personally killed him later, after luring him back to Iraq saying all was forgiven, (though it was reportedly son Uday who actually pulled the piano wire tight), that they weren't revenging themselves on a traitor who exposed State secrets, but rather were- (let's see, all this putting myself into the mind of a liberal idiot is kind of tiring)- ... were, uh, showing...that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. He didn't pay up on a Superbowl bet. His cellphone ringing got annoying; that's why they killed him...

After all, who could conceive of gangsters... tampering with or concealing evidence. That's just too preposterous to consider.

It is the lawyers' way of exempting practically everyone from any guilt because no one did "all of it", and the proof seems "tainted" and circumstantial. By their tortured reasoning, no German soldier, no Japanese citizen, bore any responsibility at all for 100 million dead in WW2, because only Adolph and Tojo "made people do it", and only that by hearsay evidence. After the extensive search for the signed, dated document that confessed, "Okay, I admit it! I'm the dirtbag who ordered all the Jews and Gypsies killed," they couldn't find it.

They couldn't even find the filing cabinet in Berlin marked "War crimes proof, cross filed by miscreant, with signed confessions, in triplicate...". Therefore, our taking out all of those innocent Germans and Japanese who facilitated the war in any way was an act of barbarity on the part of the bad old United States- probably one we owe reparations for, once the U.N. has time to think of it.

Saddam Hussein was an avid student of Josef Stalin. He read the book, and read it thoroughly. Without this understanding, very little of what Hussein did was predictable. With it, most of what he did seemed inevitable.

The problem the world simply refuses to understand or acknowledge, until they suddenly now face it anew in Iran, is that the absolutes which attach to nuclear and mass murder weapons eliminate nearly all of the elasticity normally present in foreign relations. The options dwindle and then disappear.

We have moved from launch on impact, to launch on warning, and now are forced into "launch on threat". This is because the response time available when a war involved the loading of troops onto ships, which then sailed towards the defenders, soon gave way to airplanes which flew nearly supersonically towards the defenders, and then to missiles which nearly eliminated even that miniscule response time.

-- We now have entered a war where response time is zero. It is critical that Americans understand this. In such an environment, the only possibly deterrence lies in pre-emption. It does no good to kill the guy after he launches the chemical or nuclear "RPG". "Launch on warning" now means launch the troops to destroy any safe haven the terrorist may now have, and keep him running so that he cannot stop to organize another attack. If this fails, what will be launched instead doesn't bear thinking about.

The guilded missile of Islamofascism has no sustainer motor and needs no re-entry shield. Rather, it has a passport, or even a valid driver's license. It is even less likely to be intercepted at the border, since our Patriot Missile system wasn't prohibited by Ted Kennedy from "profiling" incoming objects; thereby establishing that we had more racist tendencies towards munitions than towards ducks.

Like it's cold war ICBM predecessor, the human bomb has no soul and comes with no warning. And since the Taliban are no longer useful to those who duped them into taking the fall for Osama, another group of chumps will provide the body, fund the guided missile, and serve the purpose of providing an expendable subgroup to trace back to. There are hundreds of such splinter organizations; funded by petro-dollars, and ready to all die heroically.

Are you ready to guarantee their international civil rights to annihilate your city? Is your sense of political retaliation against the Republicans worth the incineration of your family, and thousands of others? Is your hatred of that President who humilated "my favorite candidate" really worth what you are spending?

You should decide now, while you have time, before your efforts take the option forever out of your hands.

I could go on about this new paradigm that the world faces, but it would be like debating with the "moderate muslims" over the stupidity in what they are doing presently in the cartoon wars. I could point out that all of war- unless it is a war of absolute extermination- is in fact a war of psychological operations. Destruction continues only as long as both sides are convinced that they have a path to victory. Destruction continues until one side or the other is starved of the resources and will to prosecute the fight.

In the case of a psy-ops war such as this, a fifth column within our midst is no different in it's effect than if they had all gone over to Afghanistan, like that stupid young moron in the news a while back, and fought alongside the Taliban directly. And that all of the harmless good citizenship of undermining the morale of our fighting forces, and providing real, tangible aid to the enemy, is not just legitimate good fun, and allowable political tactical maneuvers, but rather a widening of the destruction and death necessary until the issue can be forced to a conclusion.

Unfortunately, millions of Americans still operate under the mentality that the war is a matter of political scorecards, where points are awarded for hobbling the opposing team, and that the treasonous actions actually taking place are exempted from prosecution on technicalities.

Let me at least try one final time to illustrate what we are facing, and it will be the last thing I have to offer on this thread, because if this doesn't give you pause, then nothing I could offer, (or any of the many more talented reasoners who debate), ever will.

It can be illustrated by what the British faced during the V-2 rocket attacks in WW2. The only way they knew that they were under attack was when the building exploded. The response time associated previously with the subsonic V-1 rocket, suddenly reached zero. The only saving grace at all was that the lethality of that era of weaponry was nowhere within orders of magnitude of that of the present day.

Afterwards, very long distance, early-warning radar bought us a small breather of response time, as the jet bomber gave way to the ballistic missile. Especially since the trintotoluene technology of the war also gave way to emerging fission and fusion weaponry.

Most people don't understand that the only reason the world still exists today, in approximately the same form as always, is that missile technology... didn't get too much better.

Take the time and picture this. A new "missile" has been developed which is so stealthy, that it gives no indication whatsoever on radar of where it came from, and can strike anywhere without warning or signature. Any group in possession of such a weapon can strike with impunity, with no fear of retaliation, and at any moment of their choosing.

What advantage would that give to the nation which developed it? Think about that critical question, and then put yourself in the position of an arab madman, unconstrained by any moral boundaries whatsoever, but yet, really, really butt-stupid.

The arab madman, like those idiots in Pakistan and aspiring Iran, considers that possession of such a weapon would/will give him great power. In fact, to the contary, it would be his death sentence. If he was smart he would think that through, and order the weapon immediately destroyed and it's inventors killed before word got out.

And the reason word would get out is that the only use such a weapon has is either for annihilation of your enemy or intimidation of your enemy.

Your enemy won't be intimidated if he doesn't know about it... and the annihilation of an entire nation inevitably leaves no doubt who pulled the trigger. EITHER WAY NECESSITATES A TOTAL AND UTTERLY FINAL RESPONSE FROM EVERYONE ELSE WHO WISHES TO AVOID A SIMILAR FATE.

The very possession of such a weapon becomes a death sentence... to the possessor, more immediately and more surely than anyone whom he would threaten.

If the Russians were known to have possessed such a weapon back in the fifties, we would have launched everything we had with- out hesitation. ANY nation would launch everything they had- or resign themselves to unanswerable annihilation.

No country will place the very survival of it's people in the whim of an enemy, and remain a free country. The only chance for such a country is to strike with everything, and it must be emphasized everything, in their arsenal when they are left no choice, bu madmen declared to their destruction.

At the risk of being tiresomely repetitive, when Krushev declared in the early 1960's that the Soviets would "bury the west"; that his factories were turning out nuclear missiles like, "little sausages", the threat couldn't be ignored. The reason it couldn't be ignored is threefold.

1...Any leader of a country, who is stupid enough, or reckless enough, to make such provocative statements cannot be adjudged as mature, and mentally stable enough to be tolerated as a foreign leader, in possession of WMD.

2...Threats to annihilate ones enemies are unlike threats to invoke trade sanctions. For this reason, a person who comes over to your house carrying a shotgun, and screaming that he will blow away your family, is a fair-kill target; whereas a person who stands in their driveway and remonstrates that you pick up the trash which has blown out of your trash can is not. It is the law of proportional response, and only an idiot or a liberal will ignore credible threats to kill their family/city/nation.

3...Like a person who has built a large, dense fence around their property so that whatever schemes he is cooking up can be hidden from inspection, so any nation which has made itself impenetrable to intelligence gathering has done so for a serious purpose. The seriousness of the purpose, in a lack of other definitive indications, is inferred by the fence itself. It doesn't matter that people don't understand this- it is only important that organs of the state understand this. They are the ones charged with protection of their people.

The Soviets, like the Iraqis, had constructed a security mechanism which made it impossible for our agents report the extent of their weaponry development in the 1950's. And so we began overflights, and inevitably the Gary Powers/U2 saga occurred.

Eisenhower had no choice but to eliminate overflights after this, and this proved the Soviet's undoing.

Now you ask, how could that prove their undoing? Surely my thinking is muddled.

Stay with me here. First, the Soviets weren't protecting the swarms of missiles that they had deployed. Instead, they had a brutally effective security system which protected the real state secret... that they had no huge swarms of missiles...yet. They needed to hide from the Americans the fact that they had almost nothing, at the time that their obese little blowhard was threatening the U.S. with annihilation. The fact that they were successful in preventing "weapons inspections", much like Saddam was, tied our hands. Our course was set then.

This directly forced/enabled the threat of the infamous "missile gap". It wasn't that Eisenhower wanted to encourage a massive buildup of U.S. nuclear strike forces- in fact at the close of his Administration he was so worried that the unprecidented growth of the military-industrial complex could get out of control, that he used a Presidential Address to warn specifically about that.

Note: It wasn't a case where Eisenhower "lied and kids died". It wasn't a case where Eisenhower "fell sway to some war hawks in his cabinet who just had to kill a few millions in order to pass the initiation rites into the secret club". It wasn't a case where he "leaned on the CIA to fabricate a missile gap".

It was a case where we didn't know and couldn't afford to just hope. Nations die that way. Saddam died that way.

IT DID NOT MATTER WHETHER SADDAM HAD LARGE STOCKPILES OF WEAPONS LYING ABOUT FOR A SIDEWALK SALE OR NOT, WHEN THE MARINES ARRIVED. From the time where he forced the response which he reaped, our course was set. By the same token, it did not matter whether the Soviets had a huge advantage of missiles waiting to annihilate us in 1958, or whether the Iranians are 3 years, or 3 weeks, from fielding the bomb now.

What mattered, and what only matters, in each case, was whether the answer lies in invasion- possible and relatively painless in the case of Iraq, or in an ironclad guarantee of assured total destruction, to the last Iranian child, once the first weapon is used, in the case of the Iranians and the Soviets.

The pain comes for us knowing that many of the Iranians are as much victims of the Mullahs of Iran, as the average Iraqi was of Saddam's secret police. By invading, we saved millions of Iraqis from the nuclear retaliation that almost certainly would have come their way, if Saddam had been left to his machinations.

Eisenhower faced exactly what George Bush faced, and soon all of Europe will face in Iran. Yet I wonder how many Germans and Frenchmen will now argue that a nuclear deterrent is "uncivilized and sooo.. American". How many street demonstrations will ridicule the idea of a ballistic missile shield? How many trust fund Vunderkinds will paint their faces and, like Jon Stewart, sneer at the yanks "star-wars" mentality. It is amazing what runs down the pants legs and into the boots once reality intrudes upon European sophistication.

So once again we have a country which made it impossible to inspect for annihilating weapons... with a madman more than capable of unleashing them, holding the levers of power in the country... who had previously demonstrated the effectiveness of those weapons on the Kurds, (just like Sputnik demonstrated the technology of the Soviets), ... and threatening to burn the Zionists and their American protectors to the ground.
And in a twist new to this era, openly paying a reward to those terrorists who died so to be able to murder a few more Israelis. The closest the Russians and the Chinese ever came to that, was to train Pol Pot to kill millions of Cambodians.

America acted in the 1960's and beyond, ignoring the forces of defeat and Leftism within the world and her own citizenry, and built up a superpower military capability faster than the Soviets could comprehend. The idiot Krushev, impressed with himself and his powers in Russia, had by his mouthy cleverness precipitated a chain of events which would lead to the final collapse of his homeland's iron grip on the satellite countries.

And those grievously vile demonstrators in Europe and here at home, who were more than ready to allow all of the inhabitants of those satellite countries to continue to be crushed under by the Soviet boot, soon melted away and hid, once the Evil Empire fell and the true extent of the horrors there were exposed to the world.

We misjudged, thank God. We responded to the threat, the capability of the enemy, rather than, as Jimmy Carter would have done, sitting down and reaching a heart-to-heart liberal understanding with the nice man.

So you play your trump card... "Then just why, Mister Smarty Pants, didn't we invade the Soviet Union, back then, eh?"

The answer is that we had early warning radar which established the return address of any unfriendly mail sent our way. The track of a missile or a bomber established the target, and the time purchased by the DEW radar line enabled us to launch on impact, or launch on warning. Mutual assured destruction... became unnecessary. Launch on threat was not required to survive as a nation.

Technology determines the survival of nations, but only when those in possession of it are smart enough to understand that sometimes being too clever by half means that they will end up like the Aztecs.. an interesting set of ruins for the archaeologist.

A suicide bomber leaves no contrail, no radar track, unless the idiots behind the bombing claim credit for it. And a "military", fielded by no country, has no return address. A succession of suicide bombers recruited by madmen can literally bring a modern society down in flames, if that society has not the wisdom or the will to destroy all of the mechanisms enabling such attacks to take place.

The entire calculus has changed. The development of the human guided missile, coupled with the lethality of today's weaponry, leaves no room now for liberals and other fools.

The capacity of us to absorb stupid policies ended when Jimmy Carter's putsch against the Shah of Iran, with his infantile human rights charade, threw down that "terrible abuser of the individual freedoms of communists and Islamo-fascists". The Iranian Shah, Reza Pahlavi, and his Savak police were vanquished by the peace-price winning American Presidential putz, and ushered into the world the golden age of flowers, smiles... and the kind of madness we see from the Islamists today.

The mainstream media of Jimmy Carter's day raged against the Iranian secret police with a ferocity, denouncing such abuses as inhuman. Oddly, they had nothing to say during that same period about Almukhabarat, the Ba'ath secret police, and their ministrations at Alfidailia detention center, and Abu Graib prison- back when panties on the head weren't the main source of amusement, and torture wasn't usually survived. Instead the proud defenders of press integrity decided instead to meekly follow Saddam's instructions to keep their mouths, and typewriters, shut so that they could "insure continued access".

The changes in the striking power of today's weaponry, and the possibility it's delivery into the hands of human suicide monsters, have been coupled with a madness afflicting a cult-like movement spread to varying degrees wide across the world, espousing the destruction of that civilized world, and forcing the remnants into the new slavery envisioned by the mad mullahs.

Those who would dance on their rooftops in celebration of a nuclear assault in America need look up. They might catch a momentary glimpse of the retaliatory response, before it engulfs their celebration in nuclear fire, and ends their tribe.

Our only chance to save these idiots lives, will be our luck in keeping them from acquiring the weapons which will take any further restraint out of our hands.

When we lose millions, we will end this conflict. And those in our government, in our citizenry, and across the world who enabled and encouraged the terrorists by their actions, and made it necessary to escalate all the way to unrestricted worldwide religious warfare... will bear a burden much too awful for any poor writer to illustrate in a mere essay.

You think to separate Saddam from those who threaten the world, and that since he wouldn't be the one to actually push the detonator and immolate himself, that he and the others like him deserve diplomatic immunity, like in some misguided Marquis of Queensbury satire? That their personal gutlessness in sending out illiterate, hopeless Arab youth should somehow be their ticket to personal survival?

The fact that Saddam still lives accuses us of timidity and impotence. We will do well to spare the majority, or any, of the truly innocent muslims, (if there are any), from destruction... if that is even possible at this late date. (It is, but the clock ticks, and the world's cameras roll..)

All alive now need consider... "You're either with us... or you're with the terrorists." Do people still not understand that, as Rush Limbaugh is given to intone, "Words mean things"?

If it seems that I am impassioned in this diatribe, against you personally- that is not the case. You and I at least engage in the arena of ideas, and I salute you for that. I am unable to get the rest of our family's "non-Freeper" crowd into their armor- let alone onto their horses. But we met in Gallipoli, when the flames roared.

After the dust settles, and the bodies want burying, it will be too late to have wanted to speak out... only to be excused because the Hostess Twinky was in their mouths, and it was unknown then who would win...

Oh my! What an IQ you have. Say you do teach at Berkley, right?

Aren't you ashamed you are not sharing all this wonderful (and of course accurate) intelligence with the A,B,C's of TV?

Hey, if it is in print it is true!

Saddam was NOT a friend to the terrorist factions. Despite all the digging of FOX news to desparately tie the ** terrorists to Saddam, they found nothing.

Saddam was quite open about paying large sums to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. He was literally subsidizing the whole effort.

We were great friends with the Iraqis and the Iranians in the 1960's and 1970's. At the risk of offending- so what?

Correct. Just as we helped the Soviets from 1942-1945, and then faced their missiles in Cuba 17 years later.

Saddam was NOT a friend to the terrorist factions. Despite all the digging of FOX news to desparately tie the ** terrorists to Saddam, they found nothing. No training camps, no records, nothing. They hold up Zarquawi and ** say "look he's in Iraq so there must have been a tie". Garbage. Who's to say that he didn't come into Iraq ** after the US came in. I don't remember FOX News saying in week 1, "a terrorist leader in Iraq has made a ** statement". Statements about Zarquawi in Iraq came nearly a year after we invaded.

I stopped reading at this one. I can understand why urban legends like this survive, however. The administration never talks about how AQ was in Iraq pre 9/11. They could mention the fact that Clinton's federal indictment of OBL mentions the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It's weird that they stay so silent on this matter. It's so easy to prove the left is lying; maybe the administration doesn't understand the important of showing what liars the Rats are.

It's so easy to prove the left is lying; maybe the administration doesn't understand the important of showing what liars the Rats are.

Perhaps it's because they're all liars, both parties, to one degree or another, and have a common goal...just different MO's to reach the same goal.

One of my very basic tenets, rules, is Never underestimate anyone.

FMCDH(BITS)

Me too. If this guy says there was no terrorists training camps in Iraq he is either ignorant or a liar. The Army overran one in the north and the Marines overran one in the south that housed approximately 600 terrorists according to a Marine colonel I saqw interviewed on the History channel.

I stopped reading at this one.

Peach, I suggest you go back and continue reading. What you cited was NOT the opinion of the writer but that of his correspondent... the one he intended to refute... and did so eloquently.

FYI ...

"THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq." - by Stephen F. Hayes

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=6550&R=EB291438F

"..Have him read the book Masters of Chaos and ask him what the large terrorist training camp complex east of Monsul the SOF fought their way in was there for?.."

I'll do that. And thanks.

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