Who is the one acting stupid?
I happened to pick up a copy of USA Today this morning to see what their baseball preview had to say about my Cubs. While perusing said publication, I made the mistake of reading a column by a sports writer- something Italian; he doesn't deserve the publicity even if I remembered his name- who was discussing the charges of steroid use by certain major league ball players.
The columnist was amused by the comment that George W. Bush, while owner of the Texas Rangers, could not have helped knowing about steroid use by his players. While I don't see why this would necessarily be true of any owner, I do take umbrage at this columnist's suggestion that "the Alfred E. Newman of presidents" knew this the way he "knew Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."
Leaving aside the apparent denseness of a man who just doesn't get the fact that the alleged stupidity of a very bright (though admittedly dyslexic and verbally inept) man is an invention of Left Wing spleen (one expert, examining public information available about them during the campaign, estimated that Mr. Bush's IQ was nine points higher than that of John Kerry), the fact is- once again- that there is absolutely no question that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He admitted having them at the conclusion of the first Gulf War. Seventeen seperate Security Council resolutions over twelve years required him to destroy them under UN supervision. Up until the very last minute, he effectively stymied UN attempts to search for them (attempts mandated, by the way, by no UN authority; the standard of compliance was destruction of the WMD's under the eyes of the UN inspectors. That a notoriously lenient chief inspector, Hans Blix, decided that he was close to concluding that Saddam had gotten rid of the weapons doesn't change that criterion- or its wisdom, in view of Saddam's tactics- one iota.
The question is not whether Saddam had WMD's. He did. The question is what he did with them. Mossad believes that the heavy truck traffic into Lebanon, occupied by Ba'athist Syria, an in the weeks leading up to the second Gulf War observed by U.S. spy satellites was Saddam moving them into the Bekkah Valley, where they reside today. Short of invading Lebanon and going to war with Syria, finding out for sure would be difficult.
Two things are certain, though. First, Saddam did not destroy those WMD's under UN supervision, as the peace treaty that ended the first Gulf War and seventeen Security Council resolutions required them to do. The other is that if anybody comes off looking like Alfred E. ("What? Weapons of Mass Destruction?") Newman, it isn't George W. Bush.
It's a certain sportswriter for USA Today.
Oh, and one other thing is certain. Due to the threat to our national security those weapons posed, and the impossibility of reliably determining that they were gone short of compliance by Saddam that they be destroyed under the supervision of UN inspectors, any president who hadn't gone in and- one way or the other- ended the threat would have had a great deal to answer for.
The columnist was amused by the comment that George W. Bush, while owner of the Texas Rangers, could not have helped knowing about steroid use by his players. While I don't see why this would necessarily be true of any owner, I do take umbrage at this columnist's suggestion that "the Alfred E. Newman of presidents" knew this the way he "knew Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."
Leaving aside the apparent denseness of a man who just doesn't get the fact that the alleged stupidity of a very bright (though admittedly dyslexic and verbally inept) man is an invention of Left Wing spleen (one expert, examining public information available about them during the campaign, estimated that Mr. Bush's IQ was nine points higher than that of John Kerry), the fact is- once again- that there is absolutely no question that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He admitted having them at the conclusion of the first Gulf War. Seventeen seperate Security Council resolutions over twelve years required him to destroy them under UN supervision. Up until the very last minute, he effectively stymied UN attempts to search for them (attempts mandated, by the way, by no UN authority; the standard of compliance was destruction of the WMD's under the eyes of the UN inspectors. That a notoriously lenient chief inspector, Hans Blix, decided that he was close to concluding that Saddam had gotten rid of the weapons doesn't change that criterion- or its wisdom, in view of Saddam's tactics- one iota.
The question is not whether Saddam had WMD's. He did. The question is what he did with them. Mossad believes that the heavy truck traffic into Lebanon, occupied by Ba'athist Syria, an in the weeks leading up to the second Gulf War observed by U.S. spy satellites was Saddam moving them into the Bekkah Valley, where they reside today. Short of invading Lebanon and going to war with Syria, finding out for sure would be difficult.
Two things are certain, though. First, Saddam did not destroy those WMD's under UN supervision, as the peace treaty that ended the first Gulf War and seventeen Security Council resolutions required them to do. The other is that if anybody comes off looking like Alfred E. ("What? Weapons of Mass Destruction?") Newman, it isn't George W. Bush.
It's a certain sportswriter for USA Today.
Oh, and one other thing is certain. Due to the threat to our national security those weapons posed, and the impossibility of reliably determining that they were gone short of compliance by Saddam that they be destroyed under the supervision of UN inspectors, any president who hadn't gone in and- one way or the other- ended the threat would have had a great deal to answer for.
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