Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Suffering Slings and Arrows Needlessly

I am venting frustration that my representative leadership shouldn't make a half assed effort to defend their postions.....or hesitate to go on the offensive in order to ensure that they are properly represented.......this applies equally to any journalist, pundits, and even bloggers that share our ideology.

Check this:


Former US weapons inspector says Iraq war was "prudent"
Tue Jan 27, 8:35 AM ET Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (AFP) - David Kay, who recently resigned as the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq (news - web sites), said it was "absolutely prudent" for the United States to go to war there.

"In fact," he told NBC television, "I think at the end of the inspection process, we'll paint a picture of Iraq that was far more dangerous than even we thought it was before the war.


"It was of a system collapsing. It was a country that had the capability in weapons of mass destruction areas, and ... terrorists, like ants to honey, were going after it."


Kay pointed out that prior to the war, the French, the British, the Germans and the United Nations (news - web sites) "all thought Saddam (Hussein) had weapons of mass destruction. Not discovering them tells us we've got a more fundamental problem."


He said "the tendency to say, well, it must have been pressure from the White House, is absolutely wrong."


Saddam "was putting more money into his nuclear program, he was pushing ahead his long-range missile program as hard as he could."


"We have collected dozens of examples of where he lied to the UN, violated Resolution 1441 and was in material breach," Kay added.


He noted that Saddam "had the intent to acquire these weapons. He invested huge amounts of money in them. The fact is, he wasn't successful."


In addition, he said it was "quite common" for Iraqi scientists to be "reporting back successes that they were not having." There was "a tremendous amount of corruption there and lying that went on there" in Iraq.


He said the scientists described to him an Iraq, from 1998 on, "that was descending into the utter inability to do anything organized. Corruption was there. They couldn't get the equipment. Money was wasted."


But Saddam's intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction "was absolutely there," Kay told NBC.


The White House insisted Monday that the US-led war in Iraq was "the right decision," despite growing doubts about US charges that the Iraqi leader possessed weapons of mass destruction.


"Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was a dangerous and gathering threat, and the president made the right decision to remove him from power," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Monday.


McClellan strove to limit the fallout from remarks by Kay, who just resigned as chief of the US-led effort to find the weapons at the center of President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s case for launching the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.


Kay said Sunday that he did not think Saddam possessed such arms at the time the war began. US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said a day earlier that it was an "open question" whether that was the case but insisted that the ousted Iraqi leader planned to develop them.




That almost sounds like Kay totally thinks we did the right thing doesn't it?! So WHY out of all the coverage of Kay's statements, would one get the impression that the only pertinent information Kay divulged was "WMD didn't exist in Iraq before OIF"?

We know why we thought they were there. Donks would rather we forget! The possibility that they were evacuated, hidden and the key to their location destroyed, or disposed of in some other way still exists. Kay even mentions that they could have moved some stuff to Syria and or that records that have been destroyed could shed further light on the issue.

Answer: For one, Bush did a pathetic job of explaining this to the press in the interview I saw (he was visiting with a world leader). For another, I went through all of the online conservative news resources to see if Kay's statements had been addressed......nada (but maybe there are a few I am unaware of)!!! Even the conservative blogging community has (for the most part) failed to address this new information in a way that supports our efforts. We know better than this, and we are wasting opportunity and resources while our adversaries and their press work tirelessly to destroy us. If we (from Bush to Bloggers) don't address critisism as quickly, directly, and effectively as possible....we are pissing away all the good work we have done.

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