Posted on 12/30/2006 3:40:44 PM PST by Wolfstar
PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: The President and First Lady are enjoying the remainder of their holiday at the ranch in Crawford prior to flying back to Washington where they will take part in services honoring former President Gerald Ford.
In the meantime, the impact of the execution of Saddam Hussein continues to reverberate in the media. And, as 2007 and the Democrat-controlled Congress looms, we must look forward with informed minds to the investigations the Marxist/Socialists in Congress are salivating to launch.
So I want to close out 2006 with a thread dedicated to the singular achievement of the Bush 43 presidency.
MAKE NO MISTAKE: SADDAM HUSSEIN WAS A MONSTER ON A PAR WITH THE MOST NOTABLE HUMAN MONSTERS EVER -- AND THE CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS KNOW IT.
Hussein openly and proudly modeled himself and his regime after former Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, whose name should equal that of Adolf Hitler in the pantheon of the most brutal tyrants in human history.
In particular, I want to focus on the twin lies that President Bush used only weapons of mass destruction as the rationale for taking down the Hussein regime, and that President Bush lied because there were no WMD. The Congressional Democrats know both accusations are not true, yet they will brutally investigate President Bush anyway.
Following are excerpts from Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: Saddam Had Them, and Used Them, but Where Have They Gone?
By: Col. Robert D. Shanks Jr., USAFR (Ret.), August 12, 2005
David Kay, the former head of the Coalition's search for Iraq's WMD, stated in an interview, early in 2004, that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons program was relocated to Syria, in the months and weeks before the war began, in March of 2003. He went on to state that this conclusion was a result of interrogations of former Iraqi officials. Just what, and how much, went to Syria specifically, and where it is being concealed, begs further research and analysis.The attack on the Iraqi city of Halabja was the largest-scale chemical weapons attack against a civilian population in modern times...But the scale and intensity of the chemical WMD campaign against Halabja was different—it was the first time that chemical weapons had been used on a major civilian population of this size. The victims included women, children and the elderly. This attack involved multiple chemical agents including mustard gas, nerve agents SARIN, TABUN and VX. Some sources reported that cyanide might also have been used. The impure form of TABUN has a cyanide residue and may have accounted for the cyanide report.
The Iraqi military used a carefully prepared cocktail of chemical agents for which there is no defense or antidote. Saddam did not use the nerve agent SOMAN because his chemical agent experts were well aware that pyridostigmine bromide is one of the chief treatments against nerve agents, but relatively ineffective against TABUN, SARIN and VX. This was a carefully planned attack.
That Saddam had WMD, and had the capability to produce more, is irrefutable so, why, after such significant investigation, have the WMD not been discovered, in Iraq?
If police in your city were to announce, months in advance, that they were preparing for a major raid on a suspected drug house, and the preparations were reported daily in the press, wouldn't the drug peddlers relocate their operations?
A similar scenario is precisely what happened to Saddam's WMD in the build up to the current Iraq war. While the US and its allies beat around the bush with the UN, for six months, Saddam's regime quietly relocated all of its WMD, and cleverly concealed their existence. However, the fact that Saddam committed genocide on his own people, using chemical WMD, cannot be so cleverly concealed.
The WMD term is sometimes imprecisely used in describing a whole range of situations. So readers will be fully aware of the exact definition it is included.
Weapons of mass destruction are defined as: "Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives or nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, but exclude the means of transporting or propelling the weapon where such means is a separable and divisible part of the weapon."
Here are links to websites that have photographic evidence of Saddam Hussein's crimes -- most of the sources for what I've included on this thread are foreign. Sometimes I think we Americans don't have the stomach for the truth:
Mundo Arabe
Halabja: Bloody Friday
Halabja Monument
Photos de Halabja
MOST OF THE SAME PEOPLE WHO TODAY ARE PLANNING TO INVESTIGATE PRESIDENT BUSH, AND IMPEACH HIM IF THEY CAN, ARE THE SAME PEOPLE WHO SUPPORTED PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON WHOLEHEARTEDLY IN THE 1990'S. Well, here's some of what they knew and did in the 1990's:
Saddam Hussein's Iraq was released by the Clinton State Department, September 13, 1999. Among the photographs included with this document are these:
Photo 5: Chemical-gas victim, Mahnaz from Halabja
Village razed near al Masha, Shia village destroyed in Southern Iraq, June-July 1999
In part, the 1999 Clinton State Department's document says:
The nature and magnitude of the crimes committed by Saddam Hussein and his regime since 1980 demand that all efforts be made to hold those individuals accountable for their crimes. We believe that Saddam Hussein and key members of his regime should be brought to justice for their past and current crimes.But despite all these strong words from his Madeline Albright-led State Department, the Clinton administration did NOTHING! Oh, he did sign the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, passed nearly unanimously by the Democrat-controlled House and closely divided Senate. Among other things, that Act made regime change in Iraq the national policy of the United States. BUT THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION DID NOTHING!While its repression of the Iraqi people continues, the Iraqi regime still is far from complying with its obligations under United Nations Security Council resolutions.
It has not fully complied with a single resolution.
It has not fully declared and destroyed its WMD programs. It has not ceased concealment of its WMD. It has not responded fully to questions from UNSCOM and the IAEA. (UNSCRs 687, 707, 715, 1051)
It has not returned Kuwaiti and Third Country POWs and Missing Persons (UNSCRs 686 and 687). 605 Kuwaiti POW/MIAs and 34 Saudis remain unaccounted for.
It has not returned all stolen Kuwaiti property (UNSCR 686). In fact, some is still deployed with Iraqi military units.
It has not stopped repressing its civilian population (UNSCR 688).
Iraq under Saddam Hussein remains dangerous, unreconstructed, and defiant. It has not disarmed. It has never apologized or expressed regret for the invasion of Kuwait. It continues to repress its people.
This is a dangerous regime that threatens its neighbors, has a long history of aggression, has ambitions to dominate the Gulf by force, and retains the capability to do so.
It took a brave man from Texas, willing to go it alone if necessary, to do what had to be done. Fortunately, he didn't have to go it alone thanks to the British, Australians, Japanese, Poles, Danes, and many others.
As Summer faded to Fall in 2001, the continental United States was attacked for the first time by a foreign enemy since the War of 1812. We must never forget the full context of that time. Not only were New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, hit by the equivalent of four intercontinental ballistic missiles in the form of four large passenger aircraft, BUT WE WERE ALSO HIT BY THE ANTRHAX ATTACK. It claimed victims from Florida to Connecticut, and was aimed directly at the U.S. Capitol.
In that context, with the FBI unable to trace the perpetrators of the anthrax attack, NO U.S. president could afford to let Saddam Hussein remain in power.
Nevertheless, despite the oft-repeated lie that WMD was the only reason given by President Bush for invading Iraq, he used virtually the identical reasons as laid out in the Clinton State Department document of September 13, 1999 -- dated, irony of ironies, two years almost to the day before the September 11, 2001 hijackings.
So, what rationale, exactly, did President Bush give for invading Iraq? Actually, there were five -- count them, FIVE -- reasons. Here are excerpts from the President's address to the United Nations a year after 9/11:
Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, President George Walker Bush, September 12, 2002
And our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a massive scale.
All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?
Our partnership of nations can meet the test before us, by making clear what we now expect of the Iraqi regime.
[CONDITION #1] If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose, and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles, and all related material.
[CONDITION #2] If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it, as all states are required to do by U.N. Security Council resolutions.
[CONDITION #3] If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shi'a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans, and others, again as required by Security Council resolutions.
[CONDITION #4] If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown. It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait, and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues, as required by Security Council resolutions.
[CONDITION #5] If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It will accept U.N. administration of funds from that program, to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
If all these steps are taken, it will signal a new openness and accountability in Iraq. And it could open the prospect of the United Nations helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis - a government based on respect for human rights, economic liberty, and internationally supervised elections.
I hope he's not. :(
You're welcome, texicali. Yes, we'll have to make them all remember these next two years.
Awww I didn't know about the dinners. That's really neat.
Haha, Rummy looks like Dick Tracy in that photo...
Hi
Hi.....LOL
At least Mrs. Ford has a chance to rest for two days, right? Then the National Cathedral funeral, and then to Grand Rapids... the last of which I think will be very nostalgic, sad but comforting.
I think you're right. She sure looks frail.
She does. It makes me sad :(
Me too, sweetie, me too.
What happened at 176?
BTTT
I didn't see it.
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