Bush vs. Hussein

My article "Can You Imagine?: Hussein Was Right & Bush Was Wrong" pointed out that Saddam Hussein’s assertions about Iraq’s weapons programs turned out to be correct, while George Bush’s assertions have turned out to be all wrong. That prompted a few emails. Here are some of the dissenters:

You said, "It’s a sorry state of affairs in America when you can trust the words of Saddam Hussein more than those of your own President." Surely you are not that naive…?

Nave? Just ask yourself: How many lies has Hussein told in the past four years? I’m not aware of any, but perhaps you could fill me in.

Now think about the many lies that George Bush has been caught in.

Is it nave to distrust someone who has lied to you over and over and over and over?

. . . and over.

While it may be true that information about Iraq getting nuclear information and material from America may have been removed from the report, it is understandable. It doesn’t alter the fact that Hussein had plans and was involved including partial bankrolling the 9/11 terrorists.

If there were any hard evidence that Hussein was involved in bankrolling the 9/11 terrorists, we would have heard about it from George Bush a hundred times by now – because it would have been the only thing he could offer to justify invading Iraq and killing tens of thousands of innocent people, with no discernible gain to offset the bloodbath.

So the weapons were destroyed by the Iraqis under the supervision of the UN? That is a bunch of crap and you know it. If that had been true, the leftist news media would have run that in oversize headlines until everyone would have been throwing up their guts.

No, the "leftist news media" were too busy repeating all the accusations against Iraq made by the Bush Administration, and too busy promoting "Operation Iraqi Freedom." And so they didn’t have time to mention anything that might throw some light on the Iraqi situation.

For example, how many times have you read in a newspaper or seen on TV or heard on talk radio about the U.S. sanctions that killed at least 500,000 Iraqi men, women, and children? Or been told that as many as 100,000 Iraqi men, women, and children may have been killed so far in the "liberation"? Or seen reported the tortures inflicted by the U.S. authorities in prisons beyond Abu Ghraib?

At the most, these items get reported once and then go down the memory hole. If you blink, you’re liable to miss them.

I’m afraid the "leftist news media" hasn’t had much interest in letting you know what was going on in Iraq.

I heard an Iraqi say last year that Hussein’s chemical-making facilities were in the middle of a milk processing plant.

I heard someone say last year that you’d robbed a bank. Of course, he didn’t offer any hard evidence – much like your Iraqi friend.

WMDs have jolly well been found. They were neither experimental nor representative of working prototypes. They were part of production runs. Either Saddam was hoarding them and got rid of most or, as now seems more probable, Iraq was a transshipment point and washing machine that laundered the dealings. May I suggest that if you want to do an intelligence report that you hire a junior enlisted man to do it for you?   They do have superior knowledge of the pertinent data.

If there were any real evidence of any of the things you’re saying, why has George Bush said there were no WMDs in Iraq? Why isn’t he telling us four times a day that he was right about Iraq having WMDs? And if the WMDs have "jolly well" been found, why don’t you tell us where they are – instead of offering various conjectures?

January 20, 2005