The left wing in this country has been especially loud and vociferous about a "timetable." The word timetable is politico speak for "wanting to act as if we are powerful, but not really doing anything helpful." Today, the dems will present for a vote two bills aimed at restricting the operations of the U.S. military, and subverting U.S. foreign policy.
War is hell, of that there is no doubt. I have been there. The chaos and fear and uncertainty, mixed with people trying their best to kill you, is not something that I wish upon anyone. Yet since 1775, Americans have volunteered to accept these conditions quite gladly. There is a mission to be accomplished in Iraq, and it takes courage and commitment to follow through and complete a job.
Of all the expressions my dad has routinely used during my memory, there is one that stands out above all others. "A job worth doing is worth doing well." I have kept that in my mind every time I face something that isn't pleasant. It might consist of wanting to cut corners in my yard work because it is 95 degrees with 90% humidity. Or it might involve not cutting corners when the lives of my Marines were at stake in Kuwait. It certainly applies to the situation in Iraq. The mission is not finished and their is work to be done. It is hard, it is frustrating, and it is deadly. But one thing remains true - No one can do it other than the United States.
The dems want a timetable. They want to write on a calendar the date and time that we will withdraw from Iraq. If they had been around at Pearl Harbor, they would not have agreed to srike back without a timetable for withdrawing from Japan.
There are WMDs in Iraq, and there have been since at least 1980. Iraq used them against the Kurds, we trained for the possibility during Desert Storm, and every intel agency in the world thought they were present in 2002. It turns out they were.
Yes, they are degraded. There is some doubt about whether they could be used as they are. Ignore this wailing. There are chemical weapons that Saddam said he had destroyed that he didnt. There are chemical weapons that were not discovered by inspectors. That says it all.
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Thursday, June 22, 2006
WMDs ARE in Iraq, Dems Say U.S. Must Leave and Not Finish the Mission
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2 Posts From Readers:
My two cents on this matter? This 500 WMD shells is probably not something we should get too worked up over.
In an earlier Junkyard blog,
There were, as I saw it, four good reasons for going to war in Iraq—strategic, humanitarian, legal, and WMD-preventive. I’ll spare you an exposition of each of those, but suffice to say for now that President Bush put too many eggs in the WMD basket. The humanitarian case and the UN sanctions/ international law case have been vindicated. The strategic question is still in debate and while I think we were right to risk it going in, it’s still in the air as to how it turns out.*
My gut reaction is to stay the course with arguing the first three reasons, i.e. “strategic, humanitarian, and legal” as our justification for Iraq. I think trying to make the arguement for these shell kind of seems a little… trivial. Kinda like lawyers splitting hairs (apologies to any lawyers in the house.. )
First, I doubt we found these 500 shells all in one central ordinance. I think they may have been scattered all over the place. They very well may have been forgotten or abandoned. This sounds kinda proposterous on my part, but I remember reading about one time at some U.S. Army base an old vine covered shack was demolished. It was then discovered that it contained some barrels of mustard agent from WWI. Not WWII, but WWI. So I guess it happens.
My guess is we should think very long and carefully before we declare this a “slam dunk” or whatnot, as this could bite us in the ass. And even if it does turn out to be nothing, and all the WMDs are nothing more than duds and hunks of rust, well, that doesn’t change the fact that we have solid strategic, humanitarian, and legal reasons for going in. Plus we are in, to put it mildly, a bar fight. Right or wrong, once you end up in a bar fight, you gotta keep fighting until you win. You can’t stop mid fight. Just don’t work like that. (AKA, cut and run)
We said Saddam had WMD prior to the war. And we then got beat all up when it seemed he didn’t. If we jump to conclusions on this WMD now, we may end up getting all beat up again.
I don’t like getting beat up…
Very respectfully,
TM
*I’m aware that Junkyard Blog then goes on to say that we should use this new WMD information to go after the liberals with. At this point we have a disagreement of opinion. But I really like the way he articulated the four reasons for going into Iraq, so I quoted it.
I don't think that this is a slam dunk. What i do think is that there are peole who wante inspections, and said that there were NO WMDs in Iraq.
Critique the comments about this release of information (and yes, there was not one 500 round stockpile...it is a cumulative since 2003). It is said that they could not be used IN PRESENT FORM. the insurgents and terrorists could not use artillery rounds in present form, not could they? They have no artillery pieces. They do use those rounds as IEDs in the form of roadside bombs. Also keep in mind that "degraded" Sarin gas is not the same as "inert" sarin gas. So maybe it kills 500 people instead of 5,000. Is it possible to use the chemical load as part of an IED?
It is nothing to go after the left with regarding their anti-war stance, as far as the big picture. But we should use it to continually remind people that it ws not Camelot in Iraq before we got there, and evil people had eveil intentions.
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