Jack Kelly
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Howard Dean offers on a nationally syndicated radio show, with only the mildest of demurrers about its accuracy, a theory that President Bush had forewarning of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Rep. James McDermott (D-Wash) tells a Seattle radio station he thinks the
Army could have captured Saddam Hussein at any time, and only did so now to
give the president a political boost.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright tells journalist Mort Kondracke
she thinks Bush has Osama bin Laden on ice somewhere, ready to be "captured"
at the time most propitious for the president's re-election campaign.
This is the sort of vicious lunacy that made Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga)
ex-Rep. McKinney. Democrats have become barking moonbats.
They may soon have more grist for their bizarre conspiracy theories.
Weapons inspector David Kay will issue early next year his report on weapons
of mass destruction. If two stories out of Britain are accurate, it won't be
good news for the tinfoil helmet crowd.
Kay's Iraq Survey Group has found "massive evidence of a huge system of
clandestine (weapons) laboratories," Prime Minister Tony Blair told British
armed forces radio Dec. 16.
On Dec. 7, the Sunday Telegraph published an interview with an Iraqi air
defense officer who said his unit and others were issued cases containing
WMD warheads which were to be used only on the explicit orders of Saddam.
The "secret weapon" was not used because the bulk of the Iraqi army would
not fight for Saddam, LtCol. al-Dabbagh told the Telegraph. When it was
clear the Iraqi army wouldn't use them, the special warheads were collected
by the Fedayeen Saddam, al-Dabbagh said. He said he thinks they are still in
Iraq.
The recently retired director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, LtGen.
James Clapper, told Agence France Presse in October there was evidence from
satellite imagery that Saddam moved WMD into Syria just before the onset of
hostilities.
On Dec. 13, the Telegraph reported on a memo sent by Tahir Jalil Habbush
al-Tikriti, then the head of Iraq's intelligence service, to Saddam. The
memo, dated July 1, 2001, reported that Mohammed Atta, the lead Sept/ 11
hijacker, had just completed a training program in Baghdad run by Abu Nidal.
Atta had demonstrated his capability to lead the team "responsible for
attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy," Tahir told Saddam.
Kay's group has pored through a lot of documents and interviewed a lot of
Iraqis, whose tongues are likely to loosen now that Saddam is in custody.
Presumably, his report will have more light to shed on what happened to the
WMD, and on Saddam's connections to al-Qaeda.
It's a shame (heh heh heh) that Kay's report will be coming out at just
about the time Dean wraps up the Democratic nomination, knocking the legs
out from under the key element of his platform.
Democrats will claim that Bush had this information all along, and
deliberately chose to hold it until its release would inflict maximum
political damage on Dean and the Democrats.
This will be false. It is Democrats who are chiefly responsible for the
timing of the Kay report. After the kerfuffle over Bush's statement in the
state of the union address that "the British government has learned that
Saddam Huseein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
Africa," Bush is wise to make sure he has all the information he can gather
before making a public report on these controversial issues.
And by downplaying, or ignoring altogether, the already abundant evidence of
Iraq's al-Qaeda ties, and by giving more credence to Saddam's claims than to
those of the president, their friends in the news media inadvertently have
helped set the Democrats up for a "Spring surprise."
The Democratic charges also will be irrelevant, because it is they who have
put themselves in position to be harmed by proof that Saddam was as
dangerous as Bill Clinton said he was.
Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt will suffer no embarrassment from release of
the Kay report. Democrats could have followed them instead of following
Howard Dean off the cliff. But those whom the gods would destroy, they first
make mad.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a
deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan
administration. Comment by clicking here.