Posted on 04/29/2003 4:19:22 AM PDT by SJackson
Twenty-one Spring days proved that the armed forces of the United States led by the brilliant duo of President George W. Bush, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield , is unmatched in today's world for the ability to gather resources, gather combat men and to attack and deliver victory in short order.
Another factor is their ability to coalesce the support of the American people for the Iraq enterprise. However, there are some in the American population who objected and continue to object to the war. Recent polls indicate that about 22-25% of the American public objected and continue to object.
Unfortunately for the country, these people have many friends in the media who have exaggerated the influence of the objectors, their activities, marches, demonstrations around the country and the world with the specific intent of creating an illusion that these objectors are numerous, influential and effective.
Key elements of the world's media have been hijacked by objectors and their friends in the media in direct contradiction to reality and to the boots on the ground, politically and militarily, that Americans have demonstrated throughout this crisis.
Here are egregious and generous examples of ultra-war objectors in the media who have fantasized American conspiracies and failures highlighted by their gratuitous assertions that America has lost the war, not on the ground, but in their minds. David Olive of the Toronto Star wrote on April 13, that, "The opponents of war in Iraq - France, Germany, Russia, China, Canada, Mexico, the Arab nations and the many others - were vindicated last week when Baghdad fell just 21 days after the U.S.-led invasion began." Further, he wrote that those countries maintained, " …that any nuclear, chemical and biological weapons Iraq might still possess could be destroyed through the U.N. inspection process without resorting to a war that has cost the lives of thousands of Iraqis."
He made fun of this, "Saddam Hussein is now taking his place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed brutal dictators," said Donald Rumsfield, the U.S. defence secretary. Equating the regional bully Saddam with the savage imperialism of Hitler, who brought about the death of more than 40 million people, is dime-store sophistry. But it's essential in the bid to approximate Rumsfield genius as a military strategist with that of William Tecumseh Sherman or Dwight Eisenhower."
He concludes, "Not since Vietnam has mendacity so thoroughly characterized both the goals and methods of U.S. foreign policy."
Another critic, Joshua Micah Marshall, writes that the administration's "preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration's broader agenda impossible not to pursue .... Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it's just a straight-up con."
In "How America Lost the War," in "Truth out," a hysterically anti-Bush Internet site, William Rivers Pitt, a high school teacher in Boston writes, "The dictator, Saddam Hussein, has been removed from power. News anchors have likened this event to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the liberation of Paris by Allied forces during World War II. Never mind that the joyful crowds who tore down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad last week numbered perhaps one hundred people, or that the entire event was a staged media scam."
He further declares, "Saddam Hussein was not defeated. He was not overthrown, bested, beaten or destroyed. Saddam Hussein was fired, relieved of his position by a nation that hired him for a dirty job way back in 1979."
In his high school teacher's wisdom, Pitt continues, "According to Bush, Hussein had 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and nerve gas - all nightmares that were just waiting to be used in New York or Los Angeles. The hood ornament on this push to war has been utterly discredited thus far, as not a speck of evidence backing these claims has been located."
Pitt concludes, "We defeated the Iraqi military, to be sure, and we fired Saddam Hussein. We have lost the real war, the important war, the war against those who attacked us on September 11. We lost the war because we betrayed the international community, whose help we desperately need in this wider war, by lying to them about Iraq's weapons and by disregarding their legitimate concerns. We have lost the war because our actions have given aid and succor to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, whose agents were and are nowhere to be found in Iraq despite the avowed words of the Bush administration. We have lost the war because the Iraqi people themselves already understand that the 'liberation' they were promised is as false as the evidence we used to invade their country. We lost the war because our moral standing to make it in the first place was utterly bereft of substance. We lost the war because the rest of the world sees the American government for what it is - a mob of hyperactive right-wing extremists with an army to play with and a dream of global dominance glowing like coals in their eyes. There is no victory here. We lost the war before the first shot was fired."
David Olive and William Rivers Pitt epitomize the phalanx of war objector sentiments today and from before the war. Unlike the New York Times propagandist, R. W. Apple, they have not eaten their words like he has, he who solemnly declared the war to be a "quagmire" because we lost a dozen people in one day. He who admitted the 21-day campaign to Baghdad turned out to be short and brilliant.
Before the war, we were hysterically told by the objectors that thousands upon thousands of innocent people would die in Iraq. At last count, Hussein's government claimed 1400 Iraqis were killed by American force of arms. We were told that Americans would die by the thousands because the Iraqi Republican Guard and the Elite Republican Guard would decimate our troops. "No blood for oil, " as a catch-phrase of the objectors was resurrected from the first Gulf War a dozen years ago. "Quagmire," Vietnam and other pejorative terms were tossed about by the objectors in the first few days of the war. We were remonstrated for not listening to the people, that the "people" --objector-led- -were against the war.
As Marshall, Olive and Pitt wrote, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, thus the entire war was a "con" job.
The problem with these statements is that they have been proven wrong in almost every respect.
Pitts was wrong about the televised pulling down of Hussein's statue in Baghdad. It was not a staged event. As fighting was going all over Baghdad, how could any expect massive crowds? What I saw was hundreds of people, including women and children cheering on the Marines as they pulled the statue down. Events like this took place all over Iraq as American troops took control.
We now have in custody top-ranking Hussein officials who are stating that they lied to the United Nations weapons inspector with whom they dealt with officially. Others have articulated that they worked on anthrax and other chemical and biological weapons and hid them from the inspectors.
Olive's contention that the objector countries were right that Iraq didn't pose a threat to America and that proof was the ease of American victory looks foolish because this is the second time we have rolled through the Iraqi army in a dozen years despite critic's crying how powerful the Iraq Army was then and now. What is proved is that American forces are superior to any in the world today, and have been for years. They were in Vietnam, as well. The armed forces didn't fail in Vietnam, the United States Congress, a Democratically controlled institution since 1955, failed us and the Vietnamese.
Olive dismisses Hussein being compared to Hitler because Hitler killed 40- million people and Hussein only killed a couple of million, but, of course, ignores Hussein's monetary rewards for killing Jews in Israel, for firing missiles at Israel in the Gulf War, for gassing his own people and for slaughtering more Moslems than any person in history. Olive is wrong and the pictures of thousands upon thousands of Shia Moslems on pilgrimages denied them by Hussein for a generation prove Olive is wrong.
His charges that the Bush Administration approached the entire Iraq question with "mendacity" not seen since Vietnam is comical and unproven. We have the declarations of high ranking Iraq generals and ministers of Hussein's government that President Bush was right, with proof to follow as they lead our people to the hiding places, the hiding places they kept silent about with Hans Blix and his United Nations inspectors.
Pitt, without proof, claims that Hussein was our invention and actually worked for us. In that, he's wrong. We did side with Hussein in his 8-year war with Iran for geopolitical reasons, but we didn't supply him with weapons or troops. If Pitt was a historian, he could relate that support to that we gave Joe Stalin, the butcher of Moscow, during World War Two. In fact, an American destroyer in the Persian Gulf was attacked by a French-made Exocet missile fired by an Iraqi Air Force jet and Americans were killed. Hussein's air force was made up of French and Russian made fighters, not American made as would have been the case if he worked for us.
Pitt claims that there has been no proof of a connection between Al Qaeda terrorists and Hussein and that American assertions about the connection was and is false. Wrong, again, Pitt. We now have documentary evidence of the connection.
Lastly, these media war objectors and the 22-25% of Americans they represent, had no effect on the country and its war effort before the war and are proving to be wrong, again and again, in the post-war epoch. Pitts' statement that we "lost the war before the first shot was fired," is as specious as his and the objectors' hysterical warnings about the "Arab street" rising up in massive anti-American anger, in the Palestinians exploding with rage, in thousands of innocent Iraqi women and children dying at the hands of Americans. They predicted slaughter of Americans in house to house fighting in Baghdad, or as former Senator Gary Hart declared, "house to house fighting was our worst fear."
None of the objectors' predications came true. The weapons of mass destruction are there and they will soon surface. Hussein's regime was far worse than its American supporters, the objectors and their friends in the media, ever supposed. Neither minority had any effect on the war and its outcome. For that, we can be thankful.
I can think of another group that is thankful these ineffective objectors and their media supplicants didn't prevail. If they had, five to ten year old children in Sadaam's prison for children who refused to serve in his Hussein youth troop, would still be in prison, not freed by United States Marines.
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JWR contributor Raoul Lowery Contreras is a columnist, radio talk-show host, and author
An outspoken anti-American Homosexual, and friend and co-author of a Child Molestor.
Could WMD be Wads of Money for DemocRats and their butt buddies in the media or who own and operate anti America Web Sites?
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