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Posted on 07/10/2003 7:15:20 PM PDT by tomball
WASHINGTON, July 10, 2003 - President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stand firm in their conviction that Saddam Hussein's regime posed a threat to world peace.
Speaking in South Africa July 9, Bush said he is "absolutely confident" removing Saddam Hussein from power was the "right thing" to do. Countering charges that he misled the public regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, the president said he is confident the Iraqi dictator had a WMD program.
"In 1991, I will remind you, we underestimated how close he was to having a nuclear weapon," he told reporters. "Imagine a world in which this tyrant had a nuclear weapon. In 1998, my predecessor raided Iraq, based upon the very same intelligence."
Now that the Iraqi dictator is gone, Bush said, "the world is a much more peaceful and secure place."
Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee later in the day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said one of the challenges facing the coalition is the "sizable and complex" task of finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
"The Iraqi regime had 12 years to conceal its programs, to move materials, hide documents, disperse equipment, develop mobile production facilities and sanitize known WMD sites, including four years with no U.N. weapons inspectors on the ground," Rumsfeld told the committee.
"Needless to say," he said, "uncovering those programs will take time." He then reminded committee members that "major combat operations ended less than 10 weeks ago."
The United States did not go to war in Iraq because of "new, dramatic evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder," Rumsfeld added. "The objective in the global war on terror is to prevent another terrorist attack like Sept. 11th -- or a biological, nuclear or chemical attack that would be worse -- before it happens," he said. "We can say with confidence that the world is a better place today because the United States led a coalition of forces into action in Iraq."
The United States took action against Saddam's regime, he explained, "because we saw the existing evidence in a new light, through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11. On that day, we saw thousands of innocent men, women and children killed by terrorists, and that experience changed our appreciation of our vulnerability and the risks the U.S. faces from terrorist states and terrorist networks armed with powerful weapons."
Saddam Hussein chose war, Rumsfeld stressed, not the United States. For 12 years, the secretary noted, the Iraqi dictator violated 17 U.N. resolutions "without cost or consequence. His regime had an international obligation to destroy its weapons of mass destruction and to prove to the world that they had done so. He refused to do so."
Saddam had the opportunity to prove his weapons of mass destruction program had ended and his weapons were destroyed, Rumsfeld said. "Had he done so, war would have been avoided."
Instead, Hussein continued to lie and obstruct U.N. inspectors. "The logical conclusion is that he did so because he wanted to keep his weapons, and he believed that he could continue to outwit the international community for another 12 years, just as he had for the past 12," Rumsfeld said
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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It is in the breaking news sidebar! |
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For the same reason that they guy with the knife in the fight with the guy with gun decides that bringing a knife to a gun fight wasn't a bright idea.
1. When the UNSCOM inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in November, 1998 (a whole 'nother story), they had confirmed the existence of "tons of chemical weapons" and "hundreds of liters of biological weapons". They were there, then. Where are they now?
2. What do you call nuclear centrifuges buried in rose gardens? Or mobile laboratories with no apparent purpose other than propagation of biological weapons? Or barrels of ricin? Or, for that matter, tanker trucks full of fumed silicon dioxide...???
Go ahead. Make my day.
The people of Iraq can thank their lucky stars that they had a sage man like Insane rather than you calling the shots.
I gather your idea of a quagmire is a sandbox that's been under a sprinkler too long.
I can and I can also spell marxist, in this case DOUGLAS.
You don't like the policy, vote for Dennis Kucinich.
Richard W.
So you believe that an army that had trouble getting food and clothing to its troops had extra resources to distribute tens of thousands of gas masks and atropine injectors simply to burn more fuel and take space in supply lines?
These guys are tougher tha the VC? Is that the ones who whine every day that they don't have any AC, or the ones who complain about waiting to buy gas? Or do you mean the tough guys who shoved women and children in front of them as they fought?
Vietnam was a mountainous tropical jungle with an unassailable reserve of 4 million well trained men in North Vietnam (same size as the Wehrmacht in June '44) and a superpower sponser. Say what?
That the press circle around our dead in Iraq like buzzards looking for red meat for the treasonous Demonrats doesn't surprise me. What does suprise me are the number of freepers looking to play into their hands and giving into what is becoming a pack-media stampede.
I can understand any number of reasons for opposing the war or wanting us to pull out now (none of which are any good imho), but to call Bush a liar when most of the "sources" are obvious Dem stooges or patent frauds is ridiculous.
There were three of them. They were sailing in ever-decreasing circles in a remote part of the Indian Ocean.
And they never existed. They were a myth...
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