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 . . . BALI (RE: TERRORISM) see "EVIL" for related links Re: The 2002 terrorist attacks in Bali: Before all the idiots in the world even ask the question, if they haven't already asked it by now, let me tell you why those guys hate Australia and the Australians: because it is a happy, open, democratic, successful, peaceful country and society that became what it is through its own efforts, resourcefulness and creativity, and because the murderers cannot live (and let live) with this. Thus they will go on murdering and maiming innocent people till they are beaten. But they will be beaten, and sooner than they imagine. Both my paternal uncles left Hungary in '39 and managed to get clandestinely into Palestine. One of them fought with the British army in WW2 and, to the end of his days, he was full of admiration for the Australian soldiers. We are all Australians now. All best. --Nelson Ascher (1958- ) Brazilian poet - I don't cry. A lot of Australian men don't. I get through funerals without crying. I've sat beside beloved relatives as they've died in hospital, and I've coped. Or not coped, I guess, depending on your theories about crying. So I'm watching the news at 5pm and suddenly, out of nowhere, start crying. A reporter had gone to the airport to cover the arrival of survivors from Bali, and stumbled upon another story. A girl was walking around the airport with a photograph of her older brother. She'd been there for hours. She was walking up to every passenger getting off planes from Bali, and was asking if they'd seen him. "This is my brother," she said, in an unwavering voice that was somehow also shot through with grief, and fear. And love. She held up another picture: "This is his friend. Have you seen them? They were together." Nobody had. Nobody could help her. Her little voice was the saddest sound I've ever heard. Just typing that, I'm crying again. --Tim Blair, http://timblair.blogspot.com/2002_10_13_timblair_archive.html#83021647 - Those who murdered Australian tourists in Bali did so as much because of Australia's efforts on behalf of East Timor as for Australia's friendship with America. But you won't hear Americans pointing the finger of blame or saying that Australia should have "understood how Moslems would react" to their support of East Timor. No, we are proud of Australia's actions, cheer them, and believe those who hate Australia for it are to be opposed, not catered to, for their "grievances" are the grievances of the wicked. Most people, in both Australia and America, who have shared in the fight against this nemesis, and grief in seeing those killed by these terrorists, know that there is only one way to respond. We know that behavior rewarded is behavior encouraged. America stands by you in your fight against those haters who killed your people, just as you stood by us, as we know that we share a new thing, among so much that our two countries have had in common in the past. We have a shared enemy, and not for the first time. We will defeat that enemy together, as we did the last time. --James H. Ruhland Fast forward to 2004: Survivors and family and friends of victims gathered on a chilly London evening to remember the 28 Britons killed by the Bali bombs two years ago but the rest of the nation seemed to have forgotten the atrocity. Today's (local time) second anniversary of the bombs which claimed 202 lives in Kuta did not rate a paragraph in any of Britain's national newspapers or a mention on television news. But around 200 members of the tight knit UK Bali Bombing Victims Group met in an atmosphere of friendly reunion on the deck of HMS Belfast on the River Thames for a moving ceremony which steered away from the church services of the past. [..] "Everybody's glad that at least here with us tonight people remember Bali. Although it is often seen as just an Australian tragedy, 57 Europeans were killed, 28 British, at least here we know everyone understands. [..] "I think the (British) media aren't interested. The media don't seem interested in longer term stories and what's happening to the families over time and that's a great frustration." --From correspondents in London, British families remember Bali, "Herald Sun" [13 Oct. 2004] - October 12 has become a sacred day on the Australian calendar - the day terror came home, emotionally if not physically. The slaughter of 202 people, including 88 Australian holidaymakers, in Bali two years ago will be marked today with memorial services, footy games and a wreath-laying ceremony in Bali. Those killed came from every corner of Australia. --Editorial, The Australian [12 Oct. 2004]  ;void(0)) BALKANS (THE) . . see "PLACES" for related links If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans. --Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Prussia 1862-1890. He unified Germany with a series of successful wars and became the first Chancellor 1871-1890 of the German Empire. Quoted in speech, House of Commons [16 August 1945] THE HAGUE -- The prosecution in Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial moved yesterday to rest its case two days early as the chief prosecutor conceded her team had not produced "the smoking gun" to convict the former Yugoslav president of genocide, the most serious charge against him. --"Doubt aired on genocide case against Milosevic", http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2004/02/26/ doubt_aired_on_genocide_case_against_milosevic/ and see: No doubt we'll see handwringing, doubts about intelligence reliability, and charges that the Clinton Administration "sexed up" intelligence and misrepresented Milosevic as a genocidal dictator in order to build support for unilateral action that even Wesley Clark called technically illegal -- but justified on the basis of an "imminent threat" of genocide, one that is now, of course, completely undermined by the absence of a "smoking gun." Massive criticism of the Clinton Administration's warmaking, which landed us in a "Balkan quagmire" from which we have yet to extricate ourselves, is sure to ensue. Yeah, right, that's going to happen. --Glenn Reynolds, http://www.instapundit.com/archives/014356.php - The United States will keep troops in Bosnia for another year and a half as part of a multinational peacekeeping force aimed at bringing stability to the Balkans, President Clinton announced Friday. Such a commitment is needed, the president said, to ensure that further violence does not erupt in the volatile region. [...] American involvement in Bosnia, which originally was to end in December, will now continue until June 1998, he said. --"U.S. troops to be in Bosnia until 1998" [15 November 1996] http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9611/15/clinton.bosnia - Lessons of Srebrenica July 11, 2005 The "Wall Street Journal" Ten years ago today, Bosnian Serb forces under the command of General Ratko Mladic entered the Bosnian Muslim town of Srebrenica, then being defended by Dutch peacekeepers. General Mladic made three demands: that the townsmen surrender their weapons; that all males between the ages of 12 and 77 be separated out for "questioning"; and that the rest of the population be expelled to Muslim areas. Within two days, 23,000 women and children had been deported. Another 5,000 Muslim men and boys who had taken refuge on a nearby Dutch base were also delivered to the Mladic forces. As we now know, most of the people surrendered by the Dutch to the Serbs were slaughtered, as were more than 2,000 others, bringing the estimated tally of the Srebrenica massacre to 7,200. Yet the scale of the atrocity alone is not why we remember it. We remember because the men of Srebrenica were betrayed by their ostensible protectors, and that carries some lessons for today. The first concerns the effectiveness of the United Nations. The U.N. began its involvement in the Balkans with an arms embargo that was supposed to apply to all sides equally, but which effectively left Bosnia's Muslims ill- defended against better equipped Serbs, who had the backing of the Belgrade government run by Slobodan Milosevic. That was followed by the U.N.'s disastrous decision to establish "safe areas" around several threatened ethnic enclaves, including Sarajevo and Srebrenica. According to a 1993 U.N. Secretariat report, safe areas would have the benefits of limiting "loss of life and property, deterring aggression, demonstrating international concern and involvement, setting the stage for political negotiations and facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aide." From the start, however, it was unclear where the U.N. soldiers to protect the enclaves would come from; then-President Clinton had ruled out the deployment of U.S. ground troops. It was also unclear whether the U.N. soldiers in safe areas were actually authorized to use force to defend the people in their care. Worst of all, the price Muslims paid for U.N. protection was to abandon their weapons, which they did within a week of the safe areas' creation. There was also the role played by the Europeans. As the Balkans crisis took hold in the early 1990s, the foreign representative of the European Community, a man named Jacques Poos, declared that "the hour of Europe has come." This was supposed to be a new and decisive Europe, unshackled from its Cold War subservience to the U.S. Instead, Europeans alternated between half-measures and attempts at negotiation with the Serbs, even as they exposed thousands of their own soldiers to risk in futile operations. When Margaret Thatcher, by then a former prime minister, called Serb atrocities "evil" and said "humanitarian aid is not enough," her views were dismissed by British Defense Minister Malcolm Rifkind as "emotional nonsense." Finally, there was the Clinton Administration, which had come to office pledging to reverse the first Bush Administration's appeasement of the "butchers of Belgrade." Today, most people remember the successful diplomatic efforts to end the Bosnian war with the 1995 Dayton Accord, as well as its successful military intervention in Kosovo in 1999. But Mr. Clinton allowed the Balkans to bleed for three years before he "did something." He let the U.N. and Europe take the lead and was frequently heard musing about the ancient roots of the Balkans conflict, which supposedly made it intractable and beyond the reach of the United States to repair. What's remarkable is that, when the U.S. did intervene -- for example, with a limited bombing campaign in 1995 -- it achieved fast and decisive results. Had Mr. Clinton honored his campaign pledges, he could have saved thousands of Bosnian lives and almost certainly averted the massacre at Srebrenica. If American policy makers want to avoid facing another Srebrenica on their watch, they must never let the U.N. determine the mission. Allowing the Europeans to "take the lead" is also a bad idea. Above all, Srebrenica is what happens when Western policy makers reject taking pre-emptive measures against gathering dangers, so that by the time the dangers are obvious it is too late to do something. It has become trendy in certain circles to speak of "No More Srebrenicas," as well as "No More Rwandas" and "No More Darfurs." If these people really believe the slogan, then the policy to make it work already has a name. It's called the Bush Doctrine.  BUSH (GEORGE W.) . . see "POLITICS" for related links see "PEOPLE" for related links George W. Bush (1946- ) The 43rd President of the United States and a former Governor of Texas I think he's done an incredible job, his Administration, on AIDS. And 250,000 Africans are on anti-viral drugs. They literally owe their lives to America. In one year that's being done... Yes, there's a lot of pressure on President Bush. If he, though, in his second term, is as bold in his commitments to Africa as he was in the first term, he indeed deserves a place in history in turning the fate of that continent around. --Bono (1960- ) Irish rock star, "Meet the Press" [26 June 2005] Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American president for Africa. But it's empirically so. --Bob Geldof (1954- ) Irish rock musician, "Time" {magazine} [June 2005] - They say 9/11 changed everything. And mostly they are right. Having sent tanks into Kuwait, nerve gas into the Kurdish streets, scud missiles over Tel Aviv and suicide bombers onto Israeli buses, Saddam Hussein had worn out his welcome. The Butcher of Baghdad is no more. He lies rotting in prison - beaten and bloated. The greatest threat to Israel in the world is no more, as Iraq moves from Saddamization to civilization. Libya has given up its terrorist ambitions. Syria is muted. The Saudis are rounding up their own terrorists. Iran is bickering between the forces of oppression and the friends of freedom. Pakistan is giving up its nuclear arms sales business. China is trading. India is emerging. And the Liberal Jewish Community is overcome - with its hatred for President George W. Bush. For them President Bush committed unpardonable sins. He made the world safer, stood up for Israel, revived the economy and restored dignity to the Office of the President - as a Republican. He cannot be forgiven and he cannot be pardoned. They seek to replace President Bush with John Kerry, their kind of President. Mr. Kerry would have Kofi Annan run our military, “Hanoi” Jane run our State Department and friends of Bill define our culture. As a youngster I was taught the two words that unite Jews globally: Never Again! And I learned that those words meant that: Never Again would we stand by and watch our families get slaughtered, Never Again would we be silent as our national leaders did nothing, Never Again would the world equate Judaism with weakness. And here in the dawning of a new century, the Jewish State is attacked by Scud missiles from Iraq, suicide bombers from the West Bank and rhetoric from the United Nations. And the majority of Jews in America, the left behind Liberals, respond with appeasement, apologies and apathy. [...] My recurring nightmare is that one day, Joe Lieberman, Chuck Schumer, Diane Finestein, Barbara Boxer, Robert Wexler and Burt Aronson arrive at the Pearly Gates to see God. And they ask: “God, we gave so much as elected officials and still we could not save Israel. Why didn’t you help?” And God replied: “Who do you think sent George W. Bush?” --Sid Dinerstein, "The Jewish Vote" - One of the editors of this magazine asked me if I would also say something about my personal evolution. I took him to mean: How do you like your new right-wing friends? In the space I have, I can only return the question. I prefer them to Pat Buchanan and Vladimir Putin and the cretinized British Conservative Party, or to the degraded, mendacious populism of Michael Moore, who compares the psychopathic murderers of Iraqis to the Minutemen. I am glad to have seen the day when a British Tory leader is repudiated by the White House. An irony of history, in the positive sense, is when Republicans are willing to risk a dangerous confrontation with an untenable and indefensible status quo. I am proud of what little I have done to forward this revolutionary cause. In Kabul recently, I interviewed Dr. Masuda Jalal, a brave Afghan physician who was now able to run for the presidency. I asked her about her support for the intervention in Iraq. "For us," she said, "the battle against terrorism and against dictatorship are the same thing." I dare you to snicker at simple-mindedness like that. --Christopher Hitchens (1949- ) British journalist, author, and literary critic, "Why I'm (Slightly) for Bush" http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041108&s=hitchens - He's donated some $18 million to organizations working to defeat President Bush. Now, billionaire George Soros is taking his campaign - and money - on the road. The Hungarian-born activist will spend between $2 million and $3 million in the next month visiting a dozen cities, sending at least 2 million informational pamphlets to voters and placing ads in national and local newspapers. --Carl Limbacher, "Soros Steps Up Efforts to Oust Bush" - What I do want to argue is that, after Washington and Lincoln, Bush is the bravest of our presidents. He has faced the most intense fire, hatred, contempt, heavily moneyed and bitterly acidic partisan opposition, underhandedness, betrayal, of any president in the last hundred years....On the number-one issue facing the nation-the war declared upon us by fascists who pretend to be religious-he has not wavered, he has not bent, he has stayed on course and true. ...It takes more bravery to continue walking calmly through immense hostility at home, than to face down a foreign foe, with a united nation at one's back. This, as I say, is a very brave president... -- Michael Novak, "The Bravest President" http://www.michaelnovak.net/Module/Article/ArticleView.aspx?id=174 - Dissident President By Natan Sharansky in _The Wall Street Journal_ April 24, 2006 There are two distinct marks of a dissident. First, dissidents are fired by ideas and stay true to them no matter the consequences. Second, they generally believe that betraying those ideas would constitute the greatest of moral failures. Give up, they say to themselves, and evil will triumph. Stand firm, and they can give hope to others and help change the world. Political leaders make the rarest of dissidents. In a democracy, a leader's lifeline is the electorate's pulse. Failure to be in tune with public sentiment can cripple any administration and undermine any political agenda. Moreover, democratic leaders, for whom compromise is critical to effective governance, hardly ever see any issue in Manichaean terms. In their world, nearly everything is colored in shades of gray. That is why President George W. Bush is such an exception. He is a man fired by a deep belief in the universal appeal of freedom, its transformative power, and its critical connection to international peace and stability. Even the fiercest critics of these ideas would surely admit that Mr. Bush has championed them both before and after his re-election, both when he was riding high in the polls and now that his popularity has plummeted, when criticism has come from longstanding opponents and from erstwhile supporters. With a dogged determination that any dissident can appreciate, Mr. Bush, faced with overwhelming opposition, stands his ideological ground, motivated in large measure by what appears to be a refusal to countenance moral failure. I myself have not been uncritical of Mr. Bush. Like my teacher, Andrei Sakharov, I agree with the president that promoting democracy is critical for international security. But I believe that too much focus has been placed on holding quick elections, while too little attention has been paid to help build free societies by protecting those freedoms -- of conscience, speech, press, religion, etc. -- that lie at democracy's core. I believe that such a mistaken approach is one of the reasons why a terrorist organization such as Hamas could come to power through ostensibly democratic means in a Palestinian society long ruled by fear and intimidation. I also believe that not enough effort has been made to turn the policy of promoting democracy into a bipartisan effort. The enemies of freedom must know that the commitment of the world's lone superpower to help expand freedom beyond its borders will not depend on the results of the next election. Just as success in winning past global conflicts depended on forging a broad coalition that stretched across party and ideological lines, success in using the advance of democracy to win the war on terror will depend on building and maintaining a wide consensus of support. Yet despite these criticisms, I recognize that I have the luxury of criticizing Mr. Bush's democracy agenda only because there is a democracy agenda in the first place. A policy that for years had been nothing more than the esoteric subject of occasional academic debate is now the focal point of American statecraft. For decades, a "realism" based on a myopic perception of international stability prevailed in the policy-making debate. For a brief period during the Cold War, the realist policy of accommodating Soviet tyranny was replaced with a policy that confronted that tyranny and made democracy and human rights inside the Soviet Union a litmus test for superpower relations. The enormous success of such a policy in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end did not stop most policy makers from continuing to advocate an approach to international stability that was based on coddling "friendly" dictators and refusing to support the aspirations of oppressed peoples to be free. Then came Sept. 11, 2001. It seemed as though that horrific day had made it clear that the price for supporting "friendly" dictators throughout the Middle East was the creation of the world's largest breeding ground of terrorism. A new political course had to be charted. Today, we are in the midst of a great struggle between the forces of terror and the forces of freedom. The greatest weapon that the free world possesses in this struggle is the awesome power of its ideas. The Bush Doctrine, based on a recognition of the dangers posed by non-democratic regimes and on committing the United States to support the advance of democracy, offers hope to many dissident voices struggling to bring democracy to their own countries. The democratic earthquake it has helped unleash, even with all the dangers its tremors entail, offers the promise of a more peaceful world. Yet with each passing day, new voices are added to the chorus of that doctrine's opponents, and the circle of its supporters grows ever smaller. Critics rail against every step on the new and difficult road on which the United States has embarked. Yet in pointing out the many pitfalls which have not been avoided and those which still can be, those critics would be wise to remember that the alternative road leads to the continued oppression of hundreds of millions of people and the continued festering of the pathologies that led to 9/11. Now that President Bush is increasingly alone in pushing for freedom, I can only hope that his dissident spirit will continue to persevere. For should that spirit break, evil will indeed triumph, and the consequences for our world would be disastrous. Mr. Sharansky spent nine years as a political prisoner in the Soviet Gulag. A former deputy prime minister of Israel and currently a member of the Knesset, he is co-author, with Ron Dermer, of "The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror" (PublicAffairs, 2004). - QUEBEC CITY -- Remember the conventional wisdom of 2004? Back then, you'll recall, it was the many members of George Bush's "unilateral" coalition who were supposed to be in trouble, not least the three doughty warriors of the Anglosphere -- the president, Tony Blair and John Howard -- who would all be paying a terrible electoral price for lying their way into war in Iraq. The Democrats' position was that Mr. Bush's rinky-dink nickel-&-dime allies didn't count: The president has "alienated almost everyone," said Jimmy Carter, "and now we have just a handful of little tiny countries supposedly helping us in Iraq." (That would be Britain, Australia, Poland, Japan . . .) Instead of those nobodies, John Kerry pledged that, under his leadership, "America will rejoin the community of nations" -- by which he meant Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, the Belgian guy . . . Two years on, Messrs. Bush, Blair, Howard and Koizumi are all re-elected, while Mr. Chirac is the lamest of lame ducks, and his ingrate citizenry have tossed out his big legacy, the European Constitution; Mr. Schröder's government was defeated and he's now shilling for Russia's state-owned Gazprom ("It's all about Gaz!"); and the latest member of the coalition of the unwilling to hit the skids is Canada's Liberal Party, which fell from office on Monday. John Kerry may have wanted to "rejoin the community of nations." Instead, "the community of nations" has joined John Kerry, windsurfing off Nantucket in electric-yellow buttock-hugging Lycra, or whatever he's doing these days. [. . . ] --Mark Steyn "An Act of Political Hygiene" Commentary in _Wall Street Journal_ [26 January 2006] - Revisionist History By Peter Wehner _The Wall Street Journal_ May 23, 2006 Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations -- the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so -- and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn: The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war. "There is no question misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq," according to Ted Kennedy. Jimmy Carter charged that on Iraq, "President Bush has not been honest with the American people." And Al Gore has said that an "abuse of the truth" characterized the administration's "march to war." These charges are themselves misleading, which explains why no independent body has found them credible. Most of the world was operating from essentially the same set of assumptions regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities. Important assumptions turned out wrong; but mistakenly relying on faulty intelligence is a world apart from lying about it. Let's review what we know. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the intelligence community's authoritative written judgment on specific national-security issues. The 2002 NIE provided a key judgment: "Iraq has continued its [WMD] programs in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade." Thanks to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission, which investigated the causes of intelligence failures in the run-up to the war, we now know that the President's Daily Brief (PDB) and the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief "were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE" (my emphasis). We also know that the intelligence in the PDB was not "markedly different" from that given to Congress. This helps explains why John Kerry, in voting to give the president the authority to use force, said, "I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." It's why Sen. Kennedy said, "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." And it's why Hillary Clinton said in 2002, "In the four years since the inspectors, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program." Beyond that, intelligence agencies from around the globe believed Saddam had WMD. Even foreign governments that opposed his removal from power believed Iraq had WMD: Just a few weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Wolfgang Ischinger, German ambassador to the U.S., said, "I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they continue to have weapons of mass destruction." In addition, no serious person would justify a war based on information he knows to be false and which would be shown to be false within months after the war concluded. It is not as if the WMD stockpile question was one that wasn't going to be answered for a century to come. The Bush administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments. Earlier this year, Mr. Gore charged that "CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House . . . found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases." Sen. Kennedy charged that the administration "put pressure on intelligence officers to produce the desired intelligence and analysis." This myth is shattered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's bipartisan Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. Among the findings: "The committee did not find any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so." Silberman-Robb concluded the same, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . [A]Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments." What the report did find is that intelligence assessments on Iraq were "riddled with errors"; "most of the fundamental errors were made and communicated to policy makers well before the now-infamous NIE of October 2002, and were not corrected in the months between the NIE and the start of the war." Because weapons of mass destruction stockpiles weren't found, Saddam posed no threat. Howard Dean declared Iraq "was not a danger to the United States." John Murtha asserted, "There was no threat to our national security." Max Cleland put it this way: "Iraq was no threat. We now know that. There are no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons programs." Yet while we did not find stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, what we did find was enough to alarm any sober-minded individual. Upon his return from Iraq, weapons inspector David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), told the Senate: "I actually think this may be one of those cases where [Iraq under Saddam Hussein] was even more dangerous than we thought." His statement when issuing the ISG progress report said: "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities" that were part of "deliberate concealment efforts" that should have been declared to the U.N. And, he concluded, "Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction." Among the key findings of the September 2004 report by Charles Duelfer, who succeeded Mr. Kay as ISG head, are that Saddam was pursuing an aggressive strategy to subvert the Oil for Food Program and to bring down U.N. sanctions through illicit finance and procurement schemes; and that Saddam intended to resume WMD efforts once U.N. sanctions were eliminated. According to Mr. Duelfer, "the guiding theme for WMD was to sustain the intellectual capacity achieved over so many years at such a great cost and to be in a position to produce again with as short a lead time as possible. . . . Virtually no senior Iraqi believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever. Evidence suggests that, as resources became available and the constraints of sanctions decayed, there was a direct expansion of activity that would have the effect of supporting future WMD reconstitution." Beyond this, Saddam's regime was one of the most sadistic and aggressive in modern history. It started a war against Iran and used mustard gas and nerve gas. A decade later Iraq invaded Kuwait. Iraq was a massively destabilizing force in the Middle East; so long as Saddam was in power, rivers of blood were sure to follow. Promoting democracy in the Middle East is a postwar rationalization. "The president now says that the war is really about the spread of democracy in the Middle East. This effort at after-the-fact justification was only made necessary because the primary rationale was so sadly lacking in fact," according to Nancy Pelosi. In fact, President Bush argued for democracy taking root in Iraq before the war began. To take just one example, he said in a speech on Feb. 26, 2003: "A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America's interests in security, and America's belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq. . . . The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. And there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East. . . . A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region." The following day the New York Times editorialized: "President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. . . . The idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy in the Arab world is one some members of the administration have been discussing for a long time." These, then, are the urban legends we must counter, else falsehoods become conventional wisdom. And what a strange world it is: For many antiwar critics, the president is faulted for the war, and he, not the former dictator of Iraq, inspires rage. The liberator rather than the oppressor provokes hatred. It is as if we have stepped through the political looking glass, into a world turned upside down and inside out. Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives. - Letter to the editor of the _Las Vegas Review Journal_ [10 January 2007] "So, the Democrats promise 'A New Direction For America.' " The stock market is at a new all-time high. America's 401(k) plans are back in positive territory. A new direction from there means, what? Unemployment is at 25-year lows. A new direction from there means, what? Oil prices are plummeting. A new direction from there means, what? Taxes are at 20-year lows. A new direction from there means, what? Federal tax revenues are at all-time highs. A new direction from there means, what? The federal budget deficit is down almost 50 percent, just as predicted over last year. A new direction from there means, what? Home valuations are up 200 percent over the past 3.5 years. A new direction from there means, what? Inflation is in check, hovering at 20-year lows. A new direction from there means, what? Not a single terrorist attack has taken place on U.S. soil since 9/11. A new direction from there means, what? Osama bin Laden is living under a rock in a dark cave, having not surfaced in years, if he's alive at all, while 95 percent of al-Qaida's top dogs are either dead or in custody, cooperating with U.S. intelligence. A new direction from there means, what? Several major terrorist attacks have already been thwarted by U.S. and British officials, including the recent planned attack involving 10 jumbo jets being exploded in mid-air over major U.S. cities in order to celebrate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. A new direction from there means, what? Just as President Bush told us on a number of occasions, Iraq was to be made "ground zero" for the war on terrorism -- and just as President Bush said they would, terrorist cells from all over the region are arriving from the shadows of their hiding places and flooding into Iraq in order to get their faces blown off by U.S. Marines rather than boarding planes and heading to the United States to wage war on us here. A new direction from there means, what? Now let me see, do I have this right? I can expect: The economy to go south; illegals to go north; taxes to go up; employment to go down; terrorism to come in; tax breaks to go out; Social Security to go away; and health care to go the same way gas prices have gone. But what the heck. I can gain comfort by knowing that Nancy P., Hillary C., John K., Edward K., Howard D., Harry R. and Obama have worked hard to create a comprehensive National Security Plan, Health Care Plan, Immigration Reform Plan, Gay Rights Plan, Same-Sex Marriage Plan, Abortion-On-Demand Plan, Tolerance of Everyone and Everything Plan, How to Return all Troops to the United States in the Next Six Months Plan, A Get Tough Plan adapted from the French Plan by the same name, and a How Everyone Can Become as Wealthy as We Are Plan. I forgot the No More Katrina Storm Plan. Now I know why I feel good after the elections. I am going to be able to sleep so much better at night knowing these dedicated politicians are thinking of me and my welfare. Mark Wilson Henderson, Nevada - Clinton awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Yugoslavia -good... Bush awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Iraq - bad... Clinton spends 77 billion on war in Serbia - good... Bush spends 87 billion in Iraq - bad... Clinton imposes regime change in Serbia - good... Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad... Clinton bombs Christian Serbs on behalf of Muslim Albanian terrorists -good... Bush liberates 25 million from a genocidal dictator - bad... Clinton commits felonies while in office - good... Bush lands on aircraft carrier in jumpsuit - bad... Clinton says mass graves in Serbia - good... Entire world says WMD in Iraq - bad.. No mass graves found in Serbia - good... No WMD found Iraq - bad.. Stock market crashes in 2000 under Clinton - good... Recession under Bush - bad... Clinton refuses to take custody of Bin Laden - good... World Trade Centers fall under Bush - bad... Clinton says Saddam has nukes - good... Bush says Saddam has nukes - bad... Clinton calls for regime change in Iraq - good... Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad... --unknown source end page | ABORTION - ARABS | ANTI-AMERICANISM | ANTI-SEMITISM | BALI - BUSH | CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - CLINTON (HILLARY) | ELECTION [AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL - 2004] & FOX NEWS | GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | HEALTH CARE (CANADIAN) - HOMOSEXUALS | HURRICANE KATRINA | IRAN | IRAQ 1 | IRAQ 2 | ISLAM - ISRAEL v. PALESTINE | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | NORTH KOREA - PATRIOT ACT | RADICAL THOUGHT | RAP MUSIC | STEM CELL RESEARCH | TERRORISM 1 | TERRORISM 2 | TERRORISM 3 | TERRORISM 4 | TERRORISM (PREVENTING) | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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