Allegations of public untruthfulness by Presidents -- often on important matters of state -- have been levelled at most Presidents. President Reagan faced accusations about his truthfulness regarding Iran-Contra. President Bush confronted similar charges, with The New York Times characterizing his statements on the subject as "incredible." President Johnson faced a "credibility gap" regarding his statements about the Viet Nam war. President Kennedy lied about the Bay of Pigs, and President Eisenhower lied about Gary Powers and the U2 incident. And many have suggested that Presidents Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were less than fully candid about the prospective involvement of the United States in World Wars I and II. All of these alleged misstatements related to public policy. They denied the public and Congress an opportunity to exercise their democratic prerogative to affect those policies.
In a briefing for journalists reported on October 29, 2003, the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency said satellite images showed a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria just before the American invasion in March 2003. Retired Air Force Lieutenant General James Clapper Jr. said he believed "unquestionably" that illicit weapons material was transported into Syria and perhaps other countries. He said "I think people below the Saddam- Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse. ... I think probably in the few months running up to the onset of the conflict, I think there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private hands, to bury it, and to move it outside the country's borders."
In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph published on January 25, 2004, Dr. David Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group, said there was evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before the start of the war to overthrow Saddam. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."
UN Confirms: WMDs Smuggled Out of Iraq
By Rod D. Martin June 21, 2004
In a report which might alternately be termed "stunning" or "terrifying", United Nations weapons inspectors confirmed last week not merely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but that he smuggled them out of his country, before, during and after the war.
Late last week, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) briefed the Security Council on Saddam's lightning-fast dismantling of missile and WMD sites before and during the war. UNMOVIC executive chairman Demetrius Perricos detailed not only the export of thousands of tons of missile components, nuclear reactor vessels and fermenters for chemical and biological warheads, but also the discovery of many (but not most) of these items -- with UN inspection tags still on them -- as far afield as Jordan, Turkey and even Holland.
Notably absent from that list is Iraq's western neighbor Syria, ruled by its own Baath Party just like Saddam's and closed to even the thought of an UNMOVIC inspection. Israeli intelligence has been reporting the large-scale smuggling of Saddam's WMD program across the Syrian border since at least two months before the war. Syria has long been the world's foremost state-sponsor of terrorism.
Perricos highlighted the proliferation danger to the Security Council, as well he should: UNMOVIC has no idea where most of the WMD material is today, just that it exists and it's gone; and anything in Syria is likely to be in Jerusalem or New York tomorrow.
This is the biggest news story of 2004 so far. Yet you haven't heard about it, have you?
You probably haven't heard about Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin either -- a socialist and no friend of America. Addressing a group of 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal last month, Martin stated bluntly that terrorists have acquired WMDs from Saddam. "The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we don't know where they are. Terrorists have access to all of them," the Canadian premier warned.
The tip of this terrorist sword was scarcely deflected on April 26th, when Jordanian intelligence broke up an al Qaeda conspiracy to detonate a large chemical device in the capital city of Amman. Directed by al Qaeda terrorist leader Abu al-Zarqawi -- the same man who personally beheaded American Nicholas Berg in Iraq last month -- the plotters sought to use a massive explosion to spread a "toxic cloud", meant to wipe out the U.S. embassy, the Jordanian prime minister's office, the Jordanian intelligence headquarters, and at least 20,000 civilians (by contrast, only 3,000 died on 9/11). Over twenty tons of chemical weapons were seized from the conspirators, who were just days away from carrying out their plot.
One wonders where CNN and USA Today think twenty tons of nerve gas and Sarin came from: Chemical Weapons-Mart? Yet their coverage, like most major media outlets, mentioned not a word about Saddam's smuggled WMDs, which -- according to liberal dogma --"don't exist."
Even though the UN says they do exist, now spread around the world.
It's not just the UN. Bill Clinton says they exist, even after the war: in a July 2003 interview with Larry King, the ex-president uncharacteristically defended George Bush, saying "it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there [was]...a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for" in Iraq. Every intelligence agency in the world -- French, British, German, Russian, Czech, you name it -- agreed before the war; Jordanian intelligence can certainly confirm their opinion today.
So what's the deal? Why the relentless pretence that "Bush lied" when even the UN and Bill Clinton say he didn't? Why the absolute silence about "inconvenient" parts of various UN reports, such as the discovery of chemical and biological weapons plans, recipes and equipment; of bio-weapons agents in an Iraqi scientist's house; of a prison lab for testing bio weapons on humans; of complexes for manufacturing fuel for prohibited long-range missiles; of artillery rounds containing enough sarin to kill thousands of people, of similar shells containing mustard gas, two (but far from the only) of which were used in a terrorist attack against U.S. forces just weeks ago?
America cannot afford the answer to this "why": that many on the left consider George W. Bush's defeat more urgent than al Qaeda's, his political death more essential than the possible physical death of millions of Americans.
The character of our foreign enemies has never been in doubt.
The character of the enemy within -- from Dan Rather to Michael Moore -- has never been clearer.
And the stakes are the highest they've ever been.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/337paflu.asp?pg=1
In a briefing for journalists reported on October 29, 2003, the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency said satellite images showed a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria just before the American invasion in March 2003. Retired Air Force Lieutenant General James Clapper Jr. said he believed "unquestionably" that illicit weapons material was transported into Syria and perhaps other countries. He said "I think people below the Saddam- Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse. ... I think probably in the few months running up to the onset of the conflict, I think there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private hands, to bury it, and to move it outside the country's borders."
In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph published on January 25, 2004, Dr. David Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group, said there was evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before the start of the war to overthrow Saddam. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."
UN Confirms: WMDs Smuggled Out of Iraq
By Rod D. Martin June 21, 2004
In a report which might alternately be termed "stunning" or "terrifying", United Nations weapons inspectors confirmed last week not merely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but that he smuggled them out of his country, before, during and after the war.
Late last week, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) briefed the Security Council on Saddam's lightning-fast dismantling of missile and WMD sites before and during the war. UNMOVIC executive chairman Demetrius Perricos detailed not only the export of thousands of tons of missile components, nuclear reactor vessels and fermenters for chemical and biological warheads, but also the discovery of many (but not most) of these items -- with UN inspection tags still on them -- as far afield as Jordan, Turkey and even Holland.
Notably absent from that list is Iraq's western neighbor Syria, ruled by its own Baath Party just like Saddam's and closed to even the thought of an UNMOVIC inspection. Israeli intelligence has been reporting the large-scale smuggling of Saddam's WMD program across the Syrian border since at least two months before the war. Syria has long been the world's foremost state-sponsor of terrorism.
Perricos highlighted the proliferation danger to the Security Council, as well he should: UNMOVIC has no idea where most of the WMD material is today, just that it exists and it's gone; and anything in Syria is likely to be in Jerusalem or New York tomorrow.
This is the biggest news story of 2004 so far. Yet you haven't heard about it, have you?
You probably haven't heard about Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin either -- a socialist and no friend of America. Addressing a group of 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal last month, Martin stated bluntly that terrorists have acquired WMDs from Saddam. "The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we don't know where they are. Terrorists have access to all of them," the Canadian premier warned.
The tip of this terrorist sword was scarcely deflected on April 26th, when Jordanian intelligence broke up an al Qaeda conspiracy to detonate a large chemical device in the capital city of Amman. Directed by al Qaeda terrorist leader Abu al-Zarqawi -- the same man who personally beheaded American Nicholas Berg in Iraq last month -- the plotters sought to use a massive explosion to spread a "toxic cloud", meant to wipe out the U.S. embassy, the Jordanian prime minister's office, the Jordanian intelligence headquarters, and at least 20,000 civilians (by contrast, only 3,000 died on 9/11). Over twenty tons of chemical weapons were seized from the conspirators, who were just days away from carrying out their plot.
One wonders where CNN and USA Today think twenty tons of nerve gas and Sarin came from: Chemical Weapons-Mart? Yet their coverage, like most major media outlets, mentioned not a word about Saddam's smuggled WMDs, which -- according to liberal dogma --"don't exist."
Even though the UN says they do exist, now spread around the world.
It's not just the UN. Bill Clinton says they exist, even after the war: in a July 2003 interview with Larry King, the ex-president uncharacteristically defended George Bush, saying "it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there [was]...a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for" in Iraq. Every intelligence agency in the world -- French, British, German, Russian, Czech, you name it -- agreed before the war; Jordanian intelligence can certainly confirm their opinion today.
So what's the deal? Why the relentless pretence that "Bush lied" when even the UN and Bill Clinton say he didn't? Why the absolute silence about "inconvenient" parts of various UN reports, such as the discovery of chemical and biological weapons plans, recipes and equipment; of bio-weapons agents in an Iraqi scientist's house; of a prison lab for testing bio weapons on humans; of complexes for manufacturing fuel for prohibited long-range missiles; of artillery rounds containing enough sarin to kill thousands of people, of similar shells containing mustard gas, two (but far from the only) of which were used in a terrorist attack against U.S. forces just weeks ago?
America cannot afford the answer to this "why": that many on the left consider George W. Bush's defeat more urgent than al Qaeda's, his political death more essential than the possible physical death of millions of Americans.
The character of our foreign enemies has never been in doubt.
The character of the enemy within -- from Dan Rather to Michael Moore -- has never been clearer.
And the stakes are the highest they've ever been.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/337paflu.asp?pg=1
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