Mushrooms after a Rainstorm
Reuters
These things turning up this month is very odd.
Ugh. For the thousandth time...
That's the 2003 State of the Union.
- The U.S. military has found more Iraqi weapons in recent months, in addition to the 500 chemical munitions recently reported by the Pentagon, a top defense intelligence official said on Thursday.
Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, did not specify if the newly found weapons were also chemical munitions. But he said he expected more.
"I do not believe we have found all the weapons," he told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, offering few details in an open session that preceded a classified briefing to lawmakers.
These things turning up this month is very odd.
- Republican lawmakers, some facing tough election battles amid growing anti-war sentiment, called the discovery of the weapons significant.
Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania suggested the munitions were in fact the weapons of mass destruction that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein lied about, leading the United States to war.
"For those who claim that these weapons are not the weapons of mass destruction that the United States went to war over, I would refer them to 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions that Saddam Hussein violated," Weldon said. "It didn't say pre-'91 chemical weapons. It didn't say post-'91 chemical weapons. It said chemical weapons."
But Democrats dismissed such arguments and said the weapons were not the "imminent threat" used to justify the war.
"It's very difficult to characterize these as the imminent threat weapons that we were told we were looking for," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat.
Ugh. For the thousandth time...
- Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
That's the 2003 State of the Union.
Comments on "Mushrooms after a Rainstorm"
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John Lewandowski said ... (6/29/2006 07:51:09 PM) :
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w3bgrrl said ... (6/30/2006 02:22:38 PM) :
post a comment"Maples said the pre-Gulf War rockets and artillery rounds recently reported by the Pentagon were produced in the 1980s and could not be used as intended.
If the chemical agent, sarin, was removed from the munitions and repackaged, it could be lethal. Its release in a U.S. city, in certain circumstances, would be devastating, Maples said."
Which is exactly what we were worried was going to happen - that Saddam would give and/or sell such chemical and biological agents to Islamofascists and they would release their poison in US cities.
"Imminent threat" arguments are the left's attempt to debate their own strawman. Remember it was John Edwards who actually called Iraq an "imminent threat," and as you pointed out in your SotU quote, Bush said we cannot wait for Iraq to become an imminent threat.
The left has two arguments regarding "imminent threat." The first is that Iraq wasn't one. Okay, so they agree with Bush. Iraq wasn't an imminent threat. How married they are to their hatred of Bush will influence whether they are willing to admit Iraq was a serious and gathering threat.
The second implied argument is that the US should only go after imminent threats. Well, the bad news for the left is that US policy is whatever the president says it is. Elections have consequences.
If you really stop and think about it, almost every argument the left uses against Bush is a variant of, "that's not what Clinton used to do." But Clinton doesn't run the show anymore and thanks to the ineptness of the DNC, the democrats don't run much of anything anymore except the news media. How's that going for you, democrats?
Put all that together and you have the left arguing that Iraq didn't qualify for invasion based on what the left says should be the basis for invasion.
Okay, that's your opinion. It's not based in reality or logic and you can't defend it without resorting to either falsehoods, ad hominem attacks or outright denial of Clinton administration moves to bring Iraq to justice. It's a free country and you can have your opinions no matter how uneducated they sound.