Subject to Change

When I posted that bit about the Iraqi WMDs, Jay Bullock and I exchanged a few emails over the validity of the story. I was going to share our conversation with you, until I realized that there was something bigger bothering me.

The debate over WMDs and the justification for invading Iraq astounds me. Even if you consider just the information that the American public had at the time, I think the war was more than justified. Here are just a few of the things we knew from watching the 11 o’clock news:

Saddam had WMDs somewhere. Ralph Nader (a staunch liberal) politely pointed out that we, the United States, had receipts for some of them.

Saddam used chemical weapons on his people (unless you’re a Sunni, and you don’t count Kurds as “your people”). There are pictures floating around if you want to see them.

Some of the materials that we knew he had were unaccounted for. Saddam played a constant shell game with the UN inspectors who were searching for them.

Saddam’s handling of the UN inspections was anything but forthcoming. In the end, our government politely informed the UN that we were enforcing their treaty for them. Thank you very much.

Leaving a sneaky little jerk like Saddam in power was a recipe for disaster. Sooner or later it was going to hurt somebody, it might already be too late. Time will tell.

The diplomatic/economic solution wasn’t working. It takes a pretty thick-headed liberal not to see that; you know, the kind who can explain why Saddam was a threat to Bill Clinton’s administration in 1998 and not in 2001.

The alternative to diplomatic pressure is the use of force. Perhaps it would’ve been preferable to take Saddam out quietly and covertly? Yes, but our government has some unfortunate rules about assassinating foreign heads of state. So, the only option left to remove Saddam was a military one.

As we’ve searched Iraq, we haven’t found massive stockpiles of weapons. But, we haven’t come back entirely empty handed, either. Some of the following reports may have been false, but we were told by the MSM that we found the following:

Missiles with capability beyond the UN prescribed maximum range.

Small stockpiles of chemicals and/or empty barrels.

Tainted munitions.

Mass graves. Not the mark of a benevolent leader.

Planes buried in the sand. Typically, a legitimate air force is stored above ground, in hangers!

One or more of the chemical/dual purpose trucks that Colin Powell described. It was squeaky clean, to the point of being suspicious. No doubt, it was actually being used by a local tribesman to make ice cream, right?

Saddam Hussein, cowering in a dark hole in the city he grew up in. Could he have been searching for his mommy?

Insurgents using chlorine gas as a weapon. Where are they getting it? Who’s supplying it? Why? 

Saddam needed to go. Before the war, even congress agreed on it. We’re better off without him. The Iraqis will be too, if they get it together. Right now there’s a certain amount of tit-for-tat retaliation going on, and the Sunnis are paying for the protection they enjoyed under their tyrant leader. Our new mission is to see that the Iraqi people get it out of their system as soon as possible.

From BrainyHistory

1721 Smallpox vaccination 1st administrated

1928 Madame Tussaud’s waxwork exhibition opens in London

1968 Students seize administration building at Ohio State

1977 New York’s famed disco Studio 54 opens

1986 4th reactor at Chernobyl U.S.S.R. explodes

1980 Iran begins scattering U.S. hostages from U.S. Embassy

1982 Rod Stewart is mugged, gunman steals his $50,000 Porsche

1991 “Dinosaurs” premieres on ABC-TV

1992 “Growing Pains,” final episode on ABC TV

1992 “Who’s The Boss,” final episode after 8 years on ABC TV

1993 NBC announces Conan O’Brien to replace David Letterman

From BrainyHistory

1684 Patent granted for thimble

1792 Guillotine 1st used

1859 Ground broken for Suez Canal

1933 U.S. and Canada drop Gold Standard

1956 Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” goes #1

1957 1st experimental sodium nuclear reactor operated

1959 St. Lawrence Seaway linking Atlantic, Great Lakes opens to shipping

1961 Robert Noyce patents integrated circuit

1978 Supreme Court rules pension plans can’t require women to pay more

1990 Hubble space telescope is placed into orbit by shuttle Discovery

WTMJ radio is reporting a large cat (possibly a mountain lion) on the prowl in Franklin at industrial park near 51st and Ryan.

It is different when a black person says it.

From BrainyHistory

1061 Halley’s Comet sparks English monk to predict country’ll be destroyed (by global warming?)

1800 Library of Congress establishes with $5,000 allocation

1833 Patent granted for 1st soda fountain

1872 Volcano Vesuvius erupts

1877 Russia declares war on Turkey through Romania (Declaring war by proxy? How bad were diplomatic relations at that point?)

1954 Australia and U.S.S.R. break diplomatic relations (Two days later, USSR declares war through Romania?)

1962 MIT sends TV signal by satellite for 1st time

1969 Paul McCartney says their is no truth to rumors he is dead

1980 U.S. military operation to save 52 hostages in Iran, fails, 8 die

1981 IBM-PC computer introduced

1989 Massachusetts declares today “New Kids on the Block Day”

1995 Court orders Darryl Strawberry to pay back $350,000 in taxes

So says Sheryl Crow.

I drove by the new location last week. There should be plenty of space for more people, at the expense of parking.

There’s a parking structure on the Southeast corner of Chicago and Water that’s free between 5 and 9pm. At least, it was free as of Friday.

Steve at No Runny Eggs has a scary story about the fate of Iraq’s WMDs. They had them once, remember?

Mr Gaubatz verbally told the Iraq Study Group (ISG) of his findings, and asked them to come with heavy equipment to breach the concrete of the bunkers and uncover their sealed contents. But to his consternation, the ISG told him they didn’t have the manpower or equipment to do it and that it would be ‘unsafe’ to try.

‘The problem was that the ISG were concentrating their efforts in looking for WMD in northern Iraq and this was in the south,’ says Mr Gaubatz. ‘They were just swept up by reports of WMD in so many different locations. But we told them that if they didn’t excavate these sites, others would….

Politics, as usual!

So we know that it’s the policy of the federal government to disavow any knowledge of these 4 bunkers. The Democrats in Congress have been asked to investigate by John Loftus, the organizer of the Intelligence Summit, but they’re not touching this with a 10-foot pole. Why? I’ll leave you with the money quote from Phillips:

The Republicans won’t touch this because it would reveal the incompetence of the Bush administration in failing to neutralise the danger of Iraqi WMD. The Democrats won’t touch it because it would show President Bush was right to invade Iraq in the first place. It is an axis of embarrassment.

Amen.

From BrainyHistory

1861 Battle of San Antonio, Texas

1871 Blossom Rock in San Francisco Bay blown up

1954 Hank Aaron hits 1st of his 755 homers

1956 U.S. Supreme Court ends race segregation on buses

1962 1st U.S. satellite to reach the moon launched

1969 Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for killing Bobby Kennedy

1984 AIDS-virus identified

1985 New Coke debuts

Pepsi never made a similar mistake, did they?

1992 McDonald’s opens its 1st fast-food restaurant in China

1994 Libertarian party nominates Howard Stern for Governor of New York