Peace in Iraq

The United States delivered Iraq from the oppression of a brutal tyrant who supported terrorists and kept his people in line using secret police and torture chambers. When that didn’t work, Saddam used WMD to slaughter his own people by the thousands. All told, he may have been responsible for as many as two million deaths.

After ridding Iraq of this tyrant, America then helped Iraq to set up a democracy in which Iraqis can vote for their own elected representatives (for the first time in history). The U.S. is now building roads, schools, utilities and hospitals. What compassionate person could possibly be against this?

On the other hand, those who want to return Iraq to the days of tyranny are Islamic radicals from places outside Iraq like Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran—or they are former Baathist allies of Saddam Hussein, who have no problem with mass indiscriminate slaughter of anyone—including innocent Muslim women and children—who stands in the way of their goal of returning Iraq to the days of tyranny.

So when Code Pink and other radical anti-war activists blame all the deaths in Iraq on the United States, and fight to pull the U.S. out of Iraq immediately, just whose side are they on and whose peace are they working to ensure?

Bush lied…

Five months before the Iraq War, the following speech was given:

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security."

No, this speech was not given by George Bush or John McCain. This was a speech given on October 10, 2002 by Hillary Clinton. Similarly, on October 10, 2002, John Edwards, once a member of the Senate intelligence committee and one time Democratic Presidential candidate said,

"Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that
he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his
neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is
doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he
gets closer to achieving that goal."

If Bush lied, so did Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and other Democrats. Please take time to read John Hawkins’ excellent articles about the other myths propagated by the Left: here and here.

Haditha

According to an article in FrontPage:

THIS WEEK YET AGAIN PROVED THE PARTYOF DEFEAT'S KING WEARS NO CLOTHES. On Wednesday, a jury found Lieutenant Andrew Grayson "not guilty" of covering up the (un)massacre at Haditha. The 27-year-old had been accused of multiple counts of making false official statements and one count of attempting to deceive by making false statements. A charge of "obstruction of justice" had been thrown out the day before.More than simply another exoneration of those accused of wrongdoing in Haditha – the sixth of eight accused – this verdict will go a long way to redefining Haditha and refuting those who insist on slurring "baby-killer" Marines and the United States herself.

Haditha is just one example of many on the Left, like John Murtha, who seem so eager to condemn America even before all the facts are known. It is precisely this eagerness that causes the Right to question patriotism of some on the Left! Please read the entire article.

Al Qaeda's defeat in Iraq

Accoring to a report in Fox News:

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Saturday that Al Qaeda's network in the country has never been closer to defeat, and he praised Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for his moves to rein in Shiite and Sunni militant groups.

Ryan Crocker's comments came as Iraqi forces have been conducting crackdowns on Al Qaeda militants in the northern city of Mosul and on Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra. Thousands of Iraqi forces also moved into the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad last week imposing control for the first time in years.

This is certainly good news for Iraqi's but bad news for Democrats who have been trying desparately to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory ever since the last election. In fact, one of Barack Obama's primary goals is to pull out of Iraq immediately before we ensure Iraq's stability.

Rebuilding Iraq

I just finished watching a discussion on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Jack Anderson and two other journalists. The discussion was about how terrible it was the Iraq gets to reap a windfall from their oil while the U.S. pays for their rebuilding. I agree with them. I think if Iraq can afford it, they should pay for their own rebuilding.

But one of the arguments many on the Left have used against the war in Iraq is that the war was all about how Republicans wanted the money from Iraqi oil. So it was rather interesting to find Left wing journalists arguing that we should take more of the money from Iraqi oil.

Saddam and terrorism

The following are excerpts are from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal”

…a new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq's links to world-wide terror networks,
including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood.

The redacted version of "Saddam and Terrorism" is the most definitive public
assessment to date from the Harmony program, the trove of "exploitable" documents, audio and video records, and computer files captured in Iraq. On the
basis of about 600,000 items, the report lays out Saddam's willingness to use terrorism against American and other international targets, as well as his larger state sponsorship of terror, which included harboring, training and equipping jihadis throughout the Middle East.

According to a 1993 memo, Saddam decided to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia," where al Qaeda was then working with warlords against U.S. humanitarian forces.

The Harmony documents "reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda -- as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term version."

For 20 years, such "support" included using Fedayeen Saddam training camps to school terrorists, especially Palestinians but also non-Iraqis "directly associated" with al Qaeda, continuing up to the fall of Baghdad.

In July 2001, the regime began patronizing a terror cartel in Bahrain calling itself the Army of Muhammad, which, according to an Iraqi memo, "is under the wings of bin Laden."

The main Iraq intelligence failure was over WMD, but the report indicates that the CIA also underestimated Saddam's ties to global terror cartels. (Wall Street Journal, see insightful analysis on HotAir).

It is so easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but try to put yourself back before the war in Iraq. Iraq was in violation of UN directives. We had been negotiating with Iraq for 10 years. Sanctions were not working. In fact, they were starving the Iraqi people while making Saddam even more filthy rich than he already was.

Not only our own intelligence services, including the CIA, but virtually all our allies’ intelligence services were saying that Iraq still had WMD. That Iraq once had WMD and used them on their own people is not in dispute, so when Saddam refused to allow inspectors to visit certain sites, or regularly blocked the inspectors’ way long enough to remove the evidence, there was no reason to doubt that Saddam still had WMD. Although, this turned out to be a deliberate deception by Saddam Hussein himself, that fact that Saddam was an active, global sponsor of terror, as seen above, was right on the money.

If I had been President, I think I would have done some “shock and awe” on the imagined WMD sites as well as Saddam’s military. I think President Bush was wrong to launch an all-out invasion. But I think it could have been even have even more disastrous to have had a President like Barack Obama who would have sat on his hands while the Iraqi people suffered through years and years of more negotiations and sanctions.

What if the next country that supports terrorist networks really does have WMD? Do you really want a President who will wait until one or more of our major cities has been decimated before we do anything? What would you do?

Invade America

The Left generally comes unglued when we challenge their patriotism but in a post on today's Daily Kos (one of the Left's most widely read blogs) the writer actually said that the United States needs not only to be invaded, but occupied!

Unfortunately, America is at a point that to be able to really feel again, to regain that compassion, it needs to be invaded and occupied in the same way that we have invaded and occupied Iraq. Then there might be a greater chance that Americans will be more reluctant to accept the invasion of another country. Maybe seeing and feeling the same level of destruction that we have inflicted on Iraq, at least the American public will understand why invading another country is unconscionable except in the most dire circumstances - which means after that country has directly attacked the United States. And that has not happened since World War II.

Can we challenge their patriotism yet? Better yet, can we try them for treason?

Boy kidnapped by Al Qaeda

Fox News is showing video this morning of American troops rescuing a little Iraqi boy who had been kidnapped by Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda threatened to deliver the boy's head to his parents if they did not pay a huge ransom.

And the Democrats want to pull out immediately and leave Iraqis at the mercy of these satanic Jihadist monsters! I agree that we can't stay in Iraq forever. Eventually the Iraqi government must stand on it's own two feet. But to pull out immediately, regardless of the consequences to innocent Iraqis, is just wrong.

Saddam Hussein and George Piro

Earlier this week, Scott Pelley interviewed George Piro on CBS's 60 Minutes. Piro is the FBI agent who spent hours and hours with Saddam Hussein before Hussein’s death. After several months of building rapport, Piro finally asked about the WMD. It turns out that Saddam deliberately lied to the world about having WMD because he was afraid of Iran:

So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at
risk to maintain this charade?" Pelley asks.

"It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq," Piro says.

Before his wars with America, Saddam had fought a ruinous eight year war
with Iran and it was Iran he still feared the most.

"He believed that he couldn't survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?" Pelley asks.

"Absolutely," Piro says.

Later in the article:

In fact, Piro says Saddam intended to produce weapons of mass destruction again,
some day. "The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still
there," Piro says.

"And that was his intention?" Pelley asks.

"Yes," Piro says.

"What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the
opportunity?" Pelley asks.

"He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program," says Piro.

"Chemical, biological, even nuclear," Pelley asks.

"Yes," Piro says.

So, I’m wondering when all those Leftists with their “Bush lied, people died” hysteria are going to apologize for their malicious, anti-American hate speech. After all, at least one of the reasons the world hates us so much is because they believed the Left when they said, “Bush lied, people died.”

Iraq and nuclear weapons

According to a recent article, Saddam Hussein

told his American captors that he so feared Iran, he wanted Iranian leaders
to believe that he had nuclear and biological weapons. So he planned to fool the
U.S. by, among other things, stalling U.N. inspectors to make it appear he had
something to hide, weapons of mass destruction or WMD. But he hoped the
post-Gulf War sanctions on Iraq would dissolve, allowing him to pursue a nuclear
capability.

Haditha and Al Qaeda

The Left was absolutely ruthless in their attacks on America for the slaughter in Haditha. Now it turns out that Haditha may have been a deliberate Al Qaeda plan to demonize America (See LGF).

Quote of the day

Who said:

"What if he [Saddam Hussein] fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments he has made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that the can go right on and do more to rebuild and arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he’ll use the arsenal…"

If you said George Bush, you would be wrong. Nor was it Tony Blair, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingrahm, Sean Hannity, or Rush Limbaugh. The quote is from Bill Clinton (quoted from Shawcross, William. Allies. New York : Public Affairs, 2005, 214-215).

Why are we in Iraq?

I just started reading a fascinating book on the War in Iraq. It reminds us of why we are in this war to begin with:

Saddam Hussein had made clear over decades that the death of hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis was of no consequence to him. The death of millions of
Iranians was to be desired. What would inhibit him from killing millions of
Americans or Europeans as will if and when he had the means? Nothing in his
record.

The inspectors could not account for about 6,000 chemical aerial bombs or for at least seven Iraqi-made missiles and two Russian-made SCUD missiles. They doubted Iraq’s claim to have destroyed twenty-five missiles warheads filled with bioweapons and could not account for fifty conventional missiles warheats.

They reported that Iraq had not accounted for the materials to produce 26,000 liters of anthrax and 1.5 tons of VX gas. They reminded us that a warhead filled with just 140 liters of VX could kill 1 million people.

The sanctions enriched Saddam’s ruling class, which deliberately impoverished the common people while blaming the international community. Saddam build more and more sumptuous and extravagant palaces for himself and his sons Uday and Qusay…

The regime gouged out the eyes of children to force confessions from their parents. It fed people into huge shredders, feet first to prolong the agony, or into vats of acid. It forced prisoners to watch their wives, daughters, and sisters being repeatedly raped by guards or having white hot rods jammed into them (Shawcross, William. Allies. New York : Public Affairs, 2005. 19, 32-35).

And the anti-war Left extremists basically say, in effect, “Screw em. It’s their problem not ours.”

Ramadi Iraq

If you only read one news story all week, you've got to read Michael Totten's Middle East Journal (September 18) from Iraq. I've copied some exerpts below but please read his entire article when you get the chance.

"Whether Anbar Province is freshly christened pro-American ground or whether
the newly founded Iraqi-American alliance is merely temporary and tactical is
hard to say. Whatever the case, the region is no longer a breeding ground for
violent anti-American and anti-Iraqi forces."

“As of July 30,” Major Peters said in early August, “we’ve have 81 days in the city with zero attacks since March 31.”

"Violence has declined so sharply in Ramadi that few journalists bother to
visit these days. It’s “boring,” most say, and it’s hard to get a story out
there – especially for daily news reporters who need fresh scoops every day."

"I was greeted by friendly Iraqis in the streets of Baghdad every day, but
the atmosphere in Ramadi was different. I am not exaggerating in the least when
I describe their attitude toward Americans as euphoric. "

"Ramadi has changed so drastically from the terrorist-infested pit that it
was as recently as April 2007 that I could hardly believe what I saw was real.
The sheer joy on the faces of these Iraqis was unmistakable. They weren’t sullen
in the least, and it was pretty obvious that they were not just pretending to be
friendly or going through the hospitality motions."

"Grown Iraqi men hugged American Soldiers and Marines."

I heard about this from Hugh Hewitt's radio program. Funny, I don't recall hearing anything like this from the main stream media. Why is that?

Stand by the mission petition

Regardless of whether you were (or are) for or against the war in Iraq, it is really beyond serious doubt that for America to withdraw our troops too soon will:

1) result in mass slaughter of Iraqis who supported America,

2) cause the terrorists to think they can defeat America anywhere, anyplace anytime, and

3) embolden the terrorists to continue or even increase their worldwide jihad against all non-Muslims

Please sign the petition against pulling out of Iraq too soon.

John Murtha and Haditha

Remember when Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha (Democrat—of course) compared the shooting of some Iraqi’s in Haditha by U.S. marines to the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam? My memory is a bit fuzzy, but as I recall, America-hating Leftists came out of the woodwork to condemn the marines and America for this supposed atrocity.

I haven’t heard any apologies yet now that the marines have been officially cleared of all charges.

Top Al Qaeda captured

On CNN's American morning, this morning, there was a report on how one of the top leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq has recently been captured, almost all of the insurgent leadership in Iraq are not Iraqi at all but actually came in from other countries, and many of them are now fleeing the country because of Bush's troop surge.

For a minute there I thought I was watching FoxNews :-)

CODEPINK and treason?

How do you spell "TREASON"?

A New York Times best-selling author says members of the supposed "peace
movement" delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and supplies to
terrorists engaged in a bloody street battle against United States Marines in
Iraq.

The latest book by Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson (U.S. Air Force-Ret.)
is called War Crimes: The Left's Campaign to Destroy Our Military and Lose the
War on Terror. In the book, he claims that two anti-war groups -- "United
for Peace & Justice" and "CODEPINK: Women for Peace" -- literally gave aid
and comfort to terrorists when they delivered $600,000 in cash and supplies they
claim was humanitarian aid to civilians.

According to Patterson, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-California) facilitated
the transaction for CODEPINK by signing a letter allowing them to get the cash
and supplies into Fallujah (WorldNetDaily).

Treason is a pretty serious charge. Perhaps the "most ethical Congress in history" should began an investigation of these allegations.

Pull out of Iraq

According to a report by Wolfgang Polzer of Assist News Serivce:

While Iraq is constantly in world news reports the plight of Iraqi Christians
goes mostly unnoticed. According to the Society for Threatened People in
Goettingen, Germany, Iraq currently experiences the biggest persecution of
Christians of our time.In fear of murders, bomb-attacks, kidnappings, and
torture Chaldo-Assyrian Christians have been fleeing the country by the
thousands.

Approximately 75 percent of the 650,000 Christians in Iraq have
been driven from their homes. They have fled mainly to neighboring Syria or
Lebanon.

A Christian community with a history of 2,000 years is in danger of
becoming extinct, according to the human rights organization.

Hundreds of Christians have been kidnapped in the past years, women raped and men beastly murdered and maimed. According to the Society bomb attacks hit 30 churches of different denominations as well as Christian schools and businesses.

Islamic clergy take part in agitation against Christians. Some try to force Christians
to denounce their faith and turn to Islam or leave the country.

If the persecution of Christians is going to be part of the new Iraqi government’s policy, or if they are just going to turn a blind eye to it, I would have to change my position and side with those Democrats who demand the immediate withdrawal of our troops.

I would add however, that our troops should take with them all Iraqi Christians who want asylum in the United States. We did not send our troops to die in Iraq to facilitate the persecution of Iraqi Christians.

National Intelligence Estimate

According to an article that appeared yesterday on CNN's website, out of 100 U.S. Senators, only six of them took time to actually read the 90 page classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before voting on the war! (hat tip to Kevin for bringing this to my attention).

I understand that Senators are very busy, so if we were talking about voting on a bridge in Alaska, for example, I would have no problem with Senators getting their information from staffers. But in this case we're talking about a vote on war! Exactly what was on their plate that was more important than the lives of American service men and women?

This is not about whether we should have gone to war or not and it is not even about Left vs. Right since both Republicans and Democrats were neglegent. This is about our elected representatives being responsible enough to inform themselves about the intelligence information before voting to send Americans to their deaths! My guess is that if the CEO's of corporations had been this neglegent, Congress would be calling for their heads.