I will add this from the 2 Jun 2003 column ('You Lied to Us') by William Safire:
Turn now to the charge heard ever more stridently that U.S. and British leaders, in their eagerness to overthrow Saddam and to turn the tide of terror in the Middle East, "hyped" the intelligence that Iraq possessed germ and poison-gas weapons.
"Hype" means "exaggerate." As used by those who were prepared to let Saddam remain in power, it is prelude to a harsh accusation: "You lied to us. You pretended to have evidence that you never had; you twisted dubious intelligence to suit your imperialistic ends, so we were morally right and you were morally wrong."
Never mind the mass graves now being unearthed of an estimated 300,000 victims, which together with the million deaths in his wars make Saddam the biggest mass murderer of Muslims in all history. Never mind his undisputed financing of suicide bombers and harboring of terrorists, from Al Qaeda's Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi to the veteran killer Abu Nidal (the only "suicide" with three bullets in his head, dispatched in Baghdad probably because he knew too much.)
And never mind our discovery of two mobile laboratories designed to produce biological and chemical agents capable of causing mass hysteria and death in any city in the world. Future discoveries will be dismissed as "dual use" or planted by us.
No; the opponents of this genocidal maniac's removal now accuse President Bush and Prime Minister Blair of a colossal hoax. Because Saddam didn't use germs or gas on our troops, they say, that proves Iraq never had them. If we cannot find them right away, they don't exist. They believe Saddam sacrificed tens of billions in oil revenues for no reason at all.
A strong majority of Americans believe he did have a dangerous program running, as he did before. Long before the C.I.A. dispatched agents to northern Iraq, Kurdish sources were quoted in this space about terrorist operations of Ansar al-Islam, whose 600 members included about 150 "Afghan Arabs" trained by Al Qaeda; after our belated bombing, some escaped to Iran.
As reassured Iraqi technicians and nurses come forward and as Baathist war criminals seek to save their skins, we will learn much more about Saddam's terrorist connections and his weaponry. It took seven years to catch the Olympic bombing suspect in North Carolina and 18 years to catch the Unabomber; the location of Saddam and Osama bin Laden won't remain a mystery forever.
Life isn’t a morality contest and purity makes a poor shield. - J. Peter Mulhern
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