Commentary
Bush administration's removal
of Hussein has paid dividends
The failure to find stockpiles of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
and weapons inspector David Kay's
recent admission that such stockpiles
likely don't exist, has Democrats in
creasingly insinuating that President
Bush lied to take the nation to war.
For example, at a campaign stop in
New Hampshire recently, Wesley
Clark ventured that "We don't know
what the motivation was," and that
Mr. Bush is "misleading the Ameri
can people."
Here's a
theory: The
President
knew there
were no
weapons of
But because
he had an ulterior motive for going to
war, he sent Dick Cheney over to Lan
gley to coerce the CIA into saying that
there were. Tony Blair likewise "sexed
up" the British intelligence estimates.
And Messrs. Bush and Blair thought it
would be a great idea to invade the
country, and then have the British and
American people find out that the
claims they made about weapons of
mass destruction were false, which
they knew them to be all along.
The theories you hear about this
are all nonsense! Before the war, the
intelligence agencies of the world
GUEST
COMMENTARY
mass destruction in Iraq.
agreed that Saddam had weapons of
mass destruction. David Kay has cit
ed German and Russian intelligence
reports that "painted a picture of
Iraq armed with weapons of mass
destruction." Even Jacques Chirac
warned last February about "the
probable possession of weapons of
mass destruction by an uncontrol
lable country, Iraq." And you can go
down through the list of statements
by Democrats from Bill Clinton to
John Kerry to Wesley Clark to the
whole lot of them — who all saw
the same intelligence — and not one
of them doubted that Saddam had
these weapons and that his regime
was a growing threat.
Throughout all of this ridiculous,
partisan, election-year rhetoric, let's
not lose sight of the nightmare sce
nario, all too plausible after Sept. 11:
A murderous dictator gives terrorists a
nuclear weapon, and they use it to in
cinerate an American city.
There are always deeper, often un
stated but nonetheless widely under
stood reasons to go to war besides
the simple, lowest common denomi
nator arguments given by politicians
and diplomats. While the threat of
weapons of mass destruction was the
centerpiece of the Bush administra
tion's arguments for the invasion of
Iraq, the far more profound and
geopolitically important reason for
war with Saddam Hussein was to es
tablish the precedent of the United
States acting preemptively and deci
sively against a tyrannical regime
suspected of pursuing weapons of
mass destruction.
That precedent has already paid big
dividends: Witness Moammar Gad
hafi's decision last year to admit in
spectors and come clean about Ubya's
weapons programs, Iran's newly pro
fessed interest in international proto
cols, Pakistan's investigation of its
weapons-proliferating nuclear scien
tists, and Kim Jong Il's invitation for a
U.S. delegation — which included
former Los Alamos National Labora
tory director Siegfried Hecker— to
tour their nuclear reactor complex at
Yongbyon.
One of the most important out
comes of the war in Iraq is that the
burden of proof is no longer on us to
establish that a dictator has weapons
of mass destruction, but rather on the
dictator to prove to the world that he
does not. The tyrants of the world are
now on notice that even being sus
pected of having weapons of mass de
struction can prematurely end their
lifetime tenures.
Sean Waltson is a graduate student
studying physics.
LETTERS
continued from page 2
Rudin proves to be
skilled puppet for the left
It's comforting to know that even in
today's times of global uncertainty,
this campus has a force that's solid as
a rock. That force is Aimee Rudin.
Standing strong against the evils of
the right-wing media, we can always
count on Rudin to spout off the Left's
War on Terror talking points. Remi
niscent of cultural obstetrician Joe
Bechard, who had his Ph.D. in Eu
gene liberal groupthink, Rudin re
mains unwavering in her quest not to
let rational thought get in the way of
her arguments.
Saddam Hussein had to be taken out
of power for the sake of his own people,
and for the sake of the rest of the world.
He violated more than 17 United Na
tions mandates, invaded Kuwait,
abused and tortured his own people,
used weapons of mass destruction and
harbored members of al Qaida. But ac
cording to Rudin, "It's about oil. *
And in a paragraph that would
make Michael Moore and Al
Franken proud, Rudin manages to
debunk the right-wing media, opine
that the war in Iraq is about oil and
oil alone, play the race card and en
gage in class warfare!
Somebody at http://MoveOn.org
please hire this woman! I urge the
Emerald to print commentary from
original thinkers, not from those who
are overcome with groupthink and
rewrite the talking points.
Christopher Looney
junior
economic
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