Useful Fools

While the Democrats and their tame press scramble frantically to convince the American people that the Iraq war was about an imminent threat (never stated by the Administration) and the the poor, ignorant Democrat congressmen were “mislead” by the administration into voting for the war, information comes out vindicating the war, and also vindicating the “Axis of Evil” designation for Iraq and North Korea.

In the Washington Post, Bill Gertz and Stephen Dinan write:

Saddam Hussein’s government paid North Korea $10 million for medium-range Nodong missile technology in the months before the Iraq war,
In other words, they actually paid money to acquire missiles with the range to hit Israel, Cypress, Ankara and Iraq - which, had they been delivered, would have been clear violations of the U.N. resolutions.
but never received any goods because of U.S. pressure, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq said yesterday.
David Kay, who is leading the Iraq Survey Group, said there is “a lot of evidence” Iraq was rebuilding its banned missile program, which it actively hid from U.N. weapons inspectors.
Who, as predicted, couldn’t find anything if it bit them in the legs!
Mr. Kay, in a telephone interview with reporters, also said the discovery that Iraq’s intelligence service had built at least a dozen clandestine weapons laboratories was one of the surprises of the three-month search for weapons of mass destruction and missile programs that he led.
A dozen clandestine weapons labs. Hmmm… and what were they for? Biochem weapons. And what would he have done with them if we had not attacked?
“The other surprise is the extent to which the Iraqis had moved ahead in the missile area,” Mr. Kay said, noting that Iraq had three missile programs that violated U.N. sanctions against building missiles with ranges greater than 93 miles.
He said European countries were involved in Iraq’s three covert missile programs, which included a copy of the 620-mile-range Nodong missile.
European countries? Hmm… who could they be? France? Russia? Germany? No, they wouldn’t do anything like that, would they? I wonder when this will hit the news.
“I can’t name them right now,” he said.
Translation: “too many people at Foggy Bottom would be embarrassed.
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On North Korea, Mr. Kay said the Iraqis launched negotiations for North Korean missile assistance in 1999
Back when Clinton was in charge, and the Norks had every reason to believe that the U.S. would do nothing, even when they shipped nukes to tip those missiles
and the cooperation continued through 2002. It was the first time U.S. officials had disclosed a link between Iraq’s missile program and North Korea.
Both Iraq under Saddam and North Korea, along with Iran, were labeled as an international “axis of evil” by President Bush.
And all of the “sophisticates” in the world were horrified and made fun of him… just like when Reagan called the USSR “the evil empire.” Well, two for three, so far… and Iran is about to break the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
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Critics, including Democrats on Capitol Hill who have heard the classified briefings Mr. Kay gave this week, said the fact no weapons of mass destruction have been found should cause the administration to change its rhetoric.
Why? Because the Democrats are pretending that the only justification for war is the actual presence of huge visible piles of weapons of mass destruction…
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“This isn’t an issue about intentions or what the hopes were or what the plans were or what the programs were,” Mr. Levin said. “What took us to war were statements about weapons of mass destruction in the possession of Saddam Hussein and the threat of their imminent use.”
Nonsense! The word “imminent” was never used. This was a pre-emptive war against a nation that had a clear intent to manufacture or acquire the weapons and had used them before. What part of “pre-emptive” doesn’t Mr. Levin understand? Hint: it means to PREVENT a disaster BEFORE the two towers fall down!
After meeting with senators yesterday, Mr. Kay, a CIA adviser to the Defense Department, told reporters that Iraq’s extensive missile program was “all hidden.”
“They were much more than paper studies; there was actual physical work taking place on several of these. [They were] not discovered by the inspectors because the Iraqis prevented them,” Mr. Kay said.
So much for the idiotic idea that a small group of UN inspectors would be able to find tiny little things like 1000 km range ballistic missiles!
As for the assistance Iraq was receiving from the unnamed countries, he said: “Our fear is that that same assistance may be made available to other countries, and we would like to close off that avenue of proliferation.”
It’s clear that we need a UN WMD inspection regime in France, Germany and Russia - or wherever the proliferators were! I’m sure they would be welcomed with open arms by these “multilateralists.”
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“The Iraqis actually advanced the North Koreans $10 million,” he said. “In late 2002, the North Koreans came to the Iraqis as a result of the Iraqis inquiring ‘Where is the stuff we paid for?’ and the North Koreans said, ‘Sorry, there’s so much U.S. attention on us that we cannot deliver it.’ ”
You can bet that if a Democrat were in office, they would have just shipped them. Fortunately, the A-team is at the helm, and is keeping an eye on the country that the C-team had given millions in the great no-nukes-in-North-Korea scam!
Baghdad then demanded that North Korea return the $10 million. “And when Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced, the North Koreans were still refusing to give the $10 million back,” he said.

The information was disclosed in documents obtained by the U.S. survey group that showed “the Iraqis attempting more vigorously every time to recover that $10 million.”

Mr. Kay said the bad deal was “a lesson in negotiating with the North Koreans that the Iraqis found out the hard way.”
What do they say? No honor among tyrantsthieves? Poor Saddam, the Norks took his money and kept hit. Hah!
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“This was designed to be a 1,000-kilometer cruise missile that would have carried a warhead of about 500 kilograms, a significant warhead with a large range,” Mr. Kay said.
Yeah, they were working on cruise missiles too! Probably to be guided by the French/Chinese Galileo precision navigation system!
Other Silkworms had been modified into 93-mile-range land-attack cruise missiles and about 12 had been built at the time the Iraqi war started March 19.
“One of these was the one that slammed into the Kuwaiti shopping center during the war,” Mr. Kay said.
So they not only were working on illegal weapons - they actually hit Kuwait City with one. Shhhhh… don’t tell the Democrats.
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“Multiple reports” from Iraqis indicate that weapons of mass destruction or related goods were shipped out to Iran, Syria and Jordan, Mr. Kay said. “It’s very difficult to confirm that from inside Iraq. We [are] trying to do that.”
Logical. Once we had decided to send in the inspectors, Saddam decided to ship out the stuff he couldn’t hide… until the US moved its troops back from Kuwait, France and Russia got the inspectors removed, and he could go back to business.
Mr. Kay said many scientists are still afraid to work with the Americans because of security concerns, noting that two scientists working with U.S. officials had been shot — one fatally — since the war.
In other words, even now there are a lot of people hiding the truth. There may be tons of Anthrax buried in the desert just outside Baghdad and we may not know for a long time.
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