Posted on 03/11/2006 12:24:01 PM PST by wagglebee
I don't know if I have any readers devoted enough to remember what I wrote in my column here on Jan. 7, so I'm not above telling you myself: I predicted we'd be learning that Saddam Hussein's WMDs were "slipped across the border into Syria."
Now, it's just a few weeks later, and we have in fact learned that was the case. I'm neither prophet nor genius on this stuff, and if I was catching on long before the first days of January, so were other people. Now we have enough increased evidence and detail to declare mystery solved.
The new mystery is why the politicians and the news media are taking scant notice.
If what's being learned isn't news, well what is? Even rumors about this would deserve notice bigger than these facts are getting. Has the definition of news become just the bits that fit an ideological agenda? Are raw facts off the menu?
By now, of course, you've heard of the verified audio tapes revealing Saddam Hussein in his palace meetings discussing his WMDs and ways to hide evidence and smuggle them over the Syrian border in the final weeks before the U.S. military came calling in earnest.
What? No! Don't tell me you haven't heard!
Right now, if I needn't say this to you, there are lots of people who do need to hear it from you. The truth is, a recently commissioned poll by the respected TIPP organization shows that no more than 20 percent of the public are even aware of the existence of these tapes showing that pre-war intelligence about Saddam's WMDs was correct all along!
Why aren't we hearing playback with voice-over translation and maybe some artsy graphics as we did with certain past events in Iraq that had the major media frenzied? My hunch is that it relates to there being no kind of pornographic element to juice the story. Then again, those old Nixon White House tapes and these recent pre-Katrina tapes evidencing too-casual official preparedness had none either – yet they got plenty of broadcast repetition. So is this story beyond big media's appetite just because its bad guy Saddam doesn't happen to be anybody they're itching to bring down?
OK, so we have only audio of Saddam's conferences, no video. But just put it on TV with graphics or stock footage and folks will watch – and appropriately watch in some shock and awe!
This is of pivotal historic importance (especially if you take seriously the idea that "Bush lied" as some of the media have all but engraved in stone), and what "everybody" knows someday (after enough exposés by the likes of The History Channel) won't help a citizenry who need to know right now. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees something catastrophically wrong here, and we'd better make some loud noise and make it immediately. Contacts with elected representatives, rage calls to corporate media switchboards, talk radio, letters to the editor …all will count for something now.
Facts known are growing more numerous, and from reputable sources, but they now include:
It's not my point here that I (along with countless others) was right about Saddam slipping WMD evidence across the border into Syria. – As I wrote here months ago, "It doesn't take a genius to figure that out." No, the louder discussion now needs to be about the neglect of this new information in our public discourse. Both the mainstream political leaders and the mainstream media are oddly muted or downright silent about the details we're learning.
Why? By now, does anyone still imagine that ignoring inconvenient facts can make them just go away?
The conventional wisdom has been settled around the idea that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs, so President Bush now has only the good riddance of Saddam and the better life of Iraqis left as a way to justify the decision to make war back in 2003. And this has made "Bush lied, people died" seem just a tad less loony a mantra for copyright by the left.
Amazingly, given what's being revealed, nobody has yet laid a glove on the conventional wisdom. But people do catch on and make up their own minds about things like this. If you check the percentages of Americans who believe Lee Harvey Oswald was not JFK's lone assassin or that UFOs are indeed extraterrestrials' vehicles, it's obvious that the "official line" on a subject does not always become what "everyone knows."
But what "everyone knows" doesn't matter; it' the way everyone acts, and this is a dreadful problem if failure to act risks our national security. If the president and members of the Congress timidly act as if the justification for making war on Saddam was only that the Iraqi people are better off now, public debate will be distorted. It is the mainstream news media's duty to point unblinkingly to the fact of Saddam's WMDs being smuggled into Syria. If they in their wisdom prefer – for whatever imaginable combination of reasons – to soft pedal the information, then we "small fry" are duty-bound to bellow about it as I do here and now.
A nation may survive or succumb based on its conventional wisdom. And each of us has a personal part in shaping it just by what we bother to mention, or refuse to let go by unchallenged, in our passing conversations with random fellow citizens. This is an art not to be forgotten as we accept life within urban masses as more likely for most of us than life in any sort of Mayberry. Can you respectfully tell a fellow traveler, say, on a commuter bus or awaiting service at a deli counter, that you've heard contrary to what you just heard him mention? DO IT!
On Manhattan subways, when I was a Columbia undergraduate, it often impressed me when my fellow "strap hangers" would do this back in the late '50s. It remained friendly, but it was authentically spirited. This kind of open exchange between strangers is one of the "vital signs" of a healthy free society. May God bless all who keep this sport participatory, and let's you and I work to keep ourselves counted among them.
In the days ahead, the erroneous conventional wisdom about Saddam's WMDs needs to be squarely in our cross hairs. Tell your friends and neighbors. "THERE WERE WMDs IN IRAQ!"
I just wish the Bush would go on prime time TV and announce this to the entire world.
bookmark
I don't think there is enough proof yet
I've said it before, but all that I can think of is that this may be a trump card waiting to be played in 2006. It will face extra scrutiny for being played then, of course.
I'm baffled, and the media has just been hush-hush about the whole thing. Compare that to the reaction to the Downey Street memo. This should be a colossal story.
I'm also a little curious in all of this. Remember how Putin revealed that Saddam Hussein had plans to attack the United States and US targets post-9/11? Why would he come public with this knowing that eventually he would probably be busted for helping smuggle weapons out of the country? And why would he allow weapons to be smuggled out of the country in the first place?
With all due respect, Pat, if you have to ask this question as anything more than a rhetorical device, you shouldn't be a political columnist.
I hope this pans out as much as anyone, but can't we do better than an article by Pat Boone in WND?
This isn't Pat Boone the "singer", is it??
We have the very best team (including Condi Rice, who knows more about Russia than just about anyone) working on our behalf.
That we need to be the eyes and ears of all things suspicious looking, that happen in our own neighborhoods, and not be the least bit hesitant to report these happenings/people to the authorities.
And, my tag line...
It is possible that Putin had no knowledge of this, but I doubt it. I think the more likely scenario is that Putin arranged for this to be done in such a way as to give him plausible deniability.
Saddam didn't move the WMD to keep the US from knowing that he had them. That knowledge was a given. He moved the WMD in order to keep CONTROL(!) of it! As things turned out, he's out, over, and on trial. But, he didn't see it this way at the time. The RATS/Left/MSM are only showing their treasonous intent.
"I just wish the Bush would go on prime time TV and announce this to the entire world."
I believe Bush is saving his political capital as an inheritance that he can bequeath to his politcal successors in 2008.
Marking.
Yes, it is. Clink on the link to WND under the headline.
I'm going to go bald if I keep scratching my head wondering who the hell, in the white house, is holding the President back from blasting this all over the media. Yeah, the Media would not do it on their own but if the President was in front of the cameras for any reason at all he could make this statement. I'm wondering just how much proof they have of this, perhaps not enough "concrete" evidence???
iirc, many folks on FR were suggesting that we'd eventually find that the WMD were moved to Syria, and made those suggestions oh... two years ago?
too early to be definitive (it will be too early until we have significant material proof in hand) but... ping.
Yes, he's a terrific writer, isn't he.
I'd sure like to see him take on the CA Democrats.
We didnt go to war in Iraq only because of WMD. The WMD point was that we should invade Iraq sooner rather than later. We went to Iraq because of Saddam's failure to comply with the cease fire agreement and because of his connections with Al Qaeda. To keep focusing on WMD and ignore the 911 Commission's connecting Saddam with Al Qaeda only helps the left.
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