The Fallacy Of The Missing WMD Argument
By Charles Cole (01/31/04)
Virtually all the Democrat presidential candidates are demanding an answer to their latest question du jour – “What happened to the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?”. After the recent statements of retiring senior U.S. arms inspector David Kay, some Democrats are calling for an investigation to determine whether President Bush lied to the American people to justify the campaign in Iraq.
Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, Senator Carl Levin and other prominent Democrats have acknowledged, for the record, their belief that Saddam had such weapons. Even the vaunted United Nations were apparently convinced that Hussein had WMD, since they never withdrew their requirement for inspectors to be allowed to work in Iraq.
In addition to actually having employed WMD against the Kurds, Saddam could be presumed to have continued his programs to develop WMD since they allowed him to suppress internal resistance to his regime, and enhanced his status in the Arab world. The destruction by the Israelis of Iraq’s erstwhile nuclear reactor decades ago didn’t prevent Hussein from attempting to rebuild this capability.
Saddam’s record of barbarity is fully documented by the mass graves uncovered by coalition forces in Iraq. Is it a stretch to assume that such a man would press hard to obtain and/or produce weapons which would allow him to increase the efficiency of his death machine? And, given the impending threat to him posed by the United States military, could he not be expected to take proactive steps to hide or move such weapons? After all, he had actively resisted U.N. inspections for years.
So, what happened to Iraq’s WMD? While we may never know the answer to this question, we can make some logical inferences. The protracted public debate on this issue gave Saddam ample opportunity to move or better hide his WMD. Saddam knew that additional U.N. resolutions were not necessary for the members of the 1990 coalition to resume military actions against him, having promised, in 1991, weapons inspections as a precondition to the cessation of those hostilities! Thus, he could be presumed to know and appreciate the immediacy of the danger to his regime. Given such impending danger, why would he not move quickly to get his WMD “out of harm’s way”?
Case law precedent emanating from U.S. Supreme Court decisions requires even liberal American judges to acknowledge the right of police to enter a residence without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime or contraband substances (e.g. narcotics) might be destroyed or irretrievably concealed, were the officers to be forced to wait for a warrant signed by a magistrate. Is a mass murdering butcher entitled to more privacy and territorial integrity than drug dealers? Why did the leaders of the Democrat Party insist on our waiting for the equivalent of a “warrant” from the most incompetent, impotent international organization in the world before acting to prevent this madman from destroying or further concealing these horrific weapons?
The liberal press has suggested that all this is due to a colossal failure of America’s intelligence agencies. This is hubris of the first order! Beginning with Senator Frank Church’s obstructing the CIA, continuing with the hurdles put in the Agency’s path by the Carter Administration, and culminating in the virtual emasculation of covert CIA operations by Senator Robert Torricelli during the Clinton Administration, liberals have meddled and interfered in areas of national security in which they have little or no competence! They then have the brazen temerity to accuse these same agencies of failing to carry out their mission when, in point of fact, it has been the infusion of liberal loony ideas and whacky theories into government which has made mission accomplishment extremely difficult, if not totally impossible! How typically cynical and hypocritical of American liberalism!
The American electorate should carefully consider these points before electing more Democrats to fix our nation’s problems. I fear that one day they’ll “fix” our problems beyond repair!
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