Rationale For War
By Monte Kuligowski (10/21/04)
If you had just been rescued from a deserted island where you spent the last 15 years isolated from the outside world, you might conclude President Bush had no legitimate rationale for the Iraq War. Seeing the president tied to the stretching rack with Democrats and liberal news reporters working together to crank out an admission that the Iraq War was a mistake, you might conclude that perhaps it was.
Without having any reference point to draw from, you would think John Kerry and friends had always been against the war. You would conclude George Bush must have been the only man on the planet who believed Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. You would assume that Bush launched a war without congressional approval, promising he would either find WMD or apologize to the country while resigning in disgrace.
You wouldn’t know Saddam Hussein had been defeated by the United States and her allies in the Gulf War of 1991. You wouldn’t know Hussein signed United Nations Resolution 687, agreeing to allow thorough and ongoing inspections to make certain Iraq had no illegal weapons as a term of surrender. You wouldn’t know Saddam consistently and continuously refused to allow full inspection and monitoring, and thumbed his nose at the resolutions that followed. You wouldn’t know President Clinton tried to bomb Saddam into submission in 1998 with Operation Desert Fox. You wouldn’t know Clinton later wanted to remove Saddam from power, but was distracted with other pressing matters.
You wouldn’t know about 9/11. You wouldn’t know that although Sen. Kerry voted against the Gulf War (which had full U.N. support), he voted for the Iraq War (of which he says we rushed into alone). You wouldn’t know Mr. Kerry relied upon the same intelligence as the administration. You wouldn’t know that the words of Sen. Kerry before the war can be swapped with the words of President Bush without any discrepancies. You wouldn’t know that on Sept. 6, 2002 Kerry said:
“If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community’s already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act.”
You wouldn’t know the U.N. Security Council did indeed fail to act (over a period of 12 years). The inverse being that Saddam failed to comply.
You wouldn’t know that as war clouds were gathering Saddam bought extra time under U.N. Resolution 1441, which gave him over a year to get any illegal weaponry across the Syrian border. Although the Duelfer report confirms that Iraq had developed no new WMD programs, the report also acknowledges and refuses to rule out the possible exodus of any then-existing illegal weapons.
You wouldn’t know that not one member of the Kerry campaign presently appalled over the absence of WMD in Iraq is on the record prior to the war saying that Saddam had no such weapons.
You wouldn’t know Congress authorized the president to use military force against Iraq with the “Iraq War Resolution” by a vote of 296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate, with the yes votes of Senators Kerry and Edwards. “The president is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.”
As further stated in the War Resolution, Sen. Kerry and the other lawmakers felt justified to authorize the use of force because, “The United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism,” and “Iraq’s ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction [are] in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other [Resolutions].”
Sen. Kerry also believed, as evinced by his vote, that, “members of al Qaida . . . are known to be in Iraq; Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens.”
On the day President Bush signed the bipartisan war resolution into law on Oct. 16, 2002, he clearly summed up the country’s rationale for war: Saddam Hussein “had a history of mass murder, of striking other nations without warning, of intense hatred for America and of contempt for the demands of the civilized world.” Per his history of compensating families of Palestinian suicide bombers, the president knew Hussein was promoting terrorism. President Bush also believed that Saddam had biological and chemical weaponry and was actively seeking nuclear weapons. So did the rest of the nation; including Sen. Kerry.
Although no nuclear weapons were found, the Duelfer report confirms that the oil-for-food scandal was part of Saddam’s plan to bypass sanctions/inspections and obtain the same.
Having just returned from your island, maybe you could make sense of the Kerry campaign and old media attempting to force Bush into saying the war was a mistake. But considering that these partisan conspirators know of the above “minor details,” their hypocrisy is simply inexcusable.
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