Friday, February 06, 2004

Lets review some facts:

President Bush’s former cabinet member (O’Neil) claims the war in Iraq was planned from first days of the Bush Administration. The administration replies that he is just a disgruntled former employee, despite hand picking him in the first place.

On Feb 2 2002 Colin Powell told the UN: the U.S. had “irrefutable and undeniable” evidence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. That Iraq constituted an imminent threat to this country and to the world.

On January 18, 2003 CNN quoted Donald Rumsfeld: “The fact that the inspectors have not yet come up with new evidence of Iraq’s WMD program could be evidence, in and of itself, of Iraq’s noncooperation,” Rumsfeld said. “We do know that Iraq has designed its programs in a way that they can proceed in an environment of inspections and that they are skilled at denial and deception.”

Rumsfeld said the United States and the United Nations have no obligation to prove that Iraq has continued efforts to develop nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Instead, he said, Iraq must prove that it has abandoned them.”

On January 26th, 2004, President Bush’s hand-picked head of the search for weapons in Iraq (David Kay) quit his post, and stated in part:”My summary view, based on what I’ve seen, is we’re very unlikely to find large stockpiles of weapons,” he said on National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition.” “I don’t think they exist.”He further states that he believess such weapon programs haven’t existed since the first gulf war.

On January 8th, 2004: Colin Powell admitted:”that he had seen no “smoking gun [or] concrete evidence” of ties between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.”

Under article 51 of the United Nations Charter, to which the US is a signatory, self defense is justified “if an armed attack occurs”. International law and general UN belief is that a preemptive attack may be considered justified only when the necessity for action is “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” (Carolina affair, as argued by Daniel Webster in 1837). As Iraq and Saddam Hussein not only had no weapons of mass destruction, but also no means of delivering them if he had had them, we are in direct violation of both international law and the UN Charter.

More than 500 Americans, and countless (literally: we have given up trying to count) Iraqis have been killed in an illegal and unnecessary war.

To fund these and other programs, President Bush proposes a budget for 2005 with a record deficit (his second in two years) of $477 billion dollars. For scope, that is approximately $1500 for every man, woman and child in the United States, money that will have to be repaid to someone, someday. This is after coming into office with a record budget surplus of $200 billion.

Our Vice-President’s (Dick Cheney) former company, Halliburton, is not only awarded many millions in no-bid contracts to rebuild Iraq, but individual employees of Halliburton are taking 6 million dollars in illegal kick-backs,as reported by Reuters on January 23rd, 2004.

Given these issues, I ask where is the moral outrage so evident four years ago,when our president refused to come clean over a sexual affair? Conservatives were up in arms, forcing an impeachment trial over lies regarding a dalliance.

In the four years since, our leaders have lied, killed thousands (including more than 500 americans), broken international law, made fortunes for private companies off the war, and driven the country to it’s highest debt level ever, imposing a burden on taxpayers that will last for generations. Where is the moral outrage? Where are the calls for impeachment? Forgive the crudity, but I can only suppose in the conservative mind, if you screw one person it is a crime, if you screw 300 million, you are a “leader.”