Critics of President Bush are citing the recent Senate Intelligence Committee Report as buttressing their charges that the president manipulated the CIA's pre-war weapons analysis and recklessly led the nation into war.
We strongly believe that these critics are wrong on both counts. First: The committee unanimously concluded that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments." Second: Based on the facts as they were known at that time ?- and, indeed, based on what we know today ?- President Bush acted properly in going to war against Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein. Indeed, to have done otherwise in the post-9/11 world would have been irresponsible.
To see all this in proper perspective, consider the reaction if Iraq had attacked Americans with chemical or biological weapons in the Middle East, in Europe or in our cities here at home ?- or if terrorists carried out these attacks using Iraq's WMD ?- and the president tried to explain away the attacks by claiming there was no "hard" intelligence that Iraq possessed WMD or had any formal relationship with al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
The American people ?- including the two of us ?- would have been outraged and demanded the president be removed for dereliction of his most basic obligation to provide for the common defense.
It would have been pointed out that in 1995, after insisting for four long years that Iraq had never produced biological weapons, Saddam Hussein was forced to acknowledge that Iraq had in fact produced 8,500 liters of anthrax, 19,180 liters of botulinum toxin and 10,000 liters of ricin.
Saddam made this admission only after being presented with documents provided to U.N. inspectors by his two sons-in-law who had defected. At that time, the inspectors located 16 warheads with anthrax and five warheads with botulinum toxin. Saddam, after being caught in the initial falsehood, still insisted he had destroyed the remaining anthrax, botulinum toxin and ricin ?- but offered absolutely no proof of the destruction.
As for chemical weapons, Saddam also admitted in 1995 to having possessed 3.9 tons of the deadly VX nerve gas and 10 tons of precursor chemicals. Not only did he fail to account for the VX, the U.N. inspections team in the late '90s concluded that Iraq might have enough precursor chemicals to produce as much as 200 additional tons of VX. (One drop of VX to uncovered skin results in death). Saddam also claimed to have "misplaced" 6,500 aerial bombs containing 700 tons of mustard gas.
Throughout the 12-year period following the end of the Gulf War, Saddam refused to cooperate with U.N. inspectors and violated 17 U.N. resolutions. This resulted in the imposition of economic sanctions which cost Iraq more than $100 billion in oil revenues over a 10-year period. Why would Saddam have continued to obstruct inspections and suffer such massive financial losses if he had nothing to hide?
No wonder that the CIA and every major intelligence agency in the world ?- including the French, Germans and Russians ?- concluded that Iraq had WMD. No wonder Bill Clinton said in 1998 "There should be no doubt that Saddam's ability to produce and deliver weapons of mass destruction poses a grave threat to the country and the world."
No wonder that, in 2002, Al Gore said, "We know Saddam has stored away many supplies of chemical and biological weapons throughout his country"; John Kerry said, "The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real"; and John Edwards said, "Iraq and Saddam Hussein provide the most severe and imminent threat."
A president cannot disregard the daily warning of the CIA director, George Tenet, not when the latter refers to the existence of weapons of mass destruction as a "slam dunk."
As to Saddam's relationship with al Qaeda, the Senate report acknowledges numerous contacts between the two but said these "did not add up to an established formal relationship." In this post-9/11 world, did anyone actually expect to see Saddam and al Qaeda enter into a formal Hitler-Stalin type accord?
And that is what this is all about. Unlike his detractors, George W. Bush realized that, ever since 9/11, we no longer had the luxury of giving an evil dictator in the most volatile region of the world the benefit of the doubt as to whether he still had the WMD which he admitted having and for which he refused to account.
President Bush did the right thing by liberating Iraq. As a result, the region and the world are safer and other terrorist dictators such as Libya's Moammar Khadafy have gotten the message that America means business.
That is why, as Sen. Joe Lieberman recently said, "We've come a long way in the cause of our national security and the freedom of the Iraqi people. We've got a lot to be proud of and to celebrate."
Indeed we do. Instead of brickbats from the loonies, craven and ideologues, President Bush is entitled to thanks from those with common sense.
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Well, I'll just go and take YOU'RE word for it heh?
