David Burress hates George W. Bush. In fact, in January 2003 he helped the far-left Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice raise funds by hosting a "Sorry-Ass State of the Union" house party. Sadly, Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) appears to be a long-term affliction with some. Burress presents an example of this phenomenon.
To the editor:
In his Sunday column, Leonard Pitts writes the following: “…the wheels began to come off the Bush administration’s argument for invading Iraq, i.e., to find the weapons of mass destruction. But of course, there were no such weapons, an inconvenient truth to which Team Bush responded with a new, after-the-fact rationale. Now, the argument for war was and always had been the need to free the poor, suffering Iraqi people.”
First, as noted by the New York Times last October, WMDs were found in Iraq. Of course, Pitts would argue that these were “old” WMDs. That may be the case. However, in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions, Saddam Hussein was required to destroy ALL of his WMDs. If he failed to do that, isn’t it likely that he failed to destroy newer WMDs as well? There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that Saddam sent WMDs to Syria prior to the invasion.* There is precedent for this since Saddam sent most of his air force to Iran prior to Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
As far as the after-the-fact rationale, the Bush administration cited several rationales before the invasion. WMDs was one. However, freeing the Iraqi people was also a major rationale cited prior to the invasion. Pitts may have forgotten that the operation to remove Saddam from power was called Operation Iraqi Freedom.The point of my letter was to point out that Leonard Pitts, the Pulitzer-prize-winning prevaricator, was not truthful when he wrote that no WMDs were found in Iraq and that the Bush administration then cam up with an after-the-fact rationale, i.e., freeing the Iraqi people. Note that I did not express an opinion regarding whether or not I believed it was a good thing to invade Iraq. I believe I merely presented the facts in a dispassionate manner.
Well, Burress, a retired KU professor and current president of the Ad Astra Institute of Kansas, took issue with my letter and offered what I suppose he considered a rebuttal:
To the editor:
Connecting the dots in his evasive letter of Feb. 26, Kevin Groenhagen appears to be claiming that:
1. President Bush could have persuaded us to go to war against Iraq even if he had admitted that any WMDs left in Iraq were useless rusted hulks; and
2. The invasion of Iraq was a good idea because Bush had a secondary goal of “freedom for Iraq” — even though the actual result was instead a combination of chaos, anarchy, and warlordism.
If that’s what Groenhagen means, his judgment is just plain wacko. If that’s not what he means, his letter makes no sense.Of course, there was nothing evasive about my letter. It addressed facts that Burress could not refute. Regarding his two points, note that the first ignores the "dot" regarding the fact that there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that Saddam's newer WMDs went to Syria. Ignoring that "dot" is an actual example of evasiveness. Burress also implies that Bush knew beforehand that "any WMDs left in Iraq were useless rusted hulks," but didn't admit that. What Burress and others with BDS fail to acknowledge is that, just a few short months before the invasion, the Clinton administration argued that Saddam had WMDs and, thus, was "a clear and present danger at all times." In other words, if those on the left believe it was a lie to say Saddam had WMDs, then they must acknowledge that that lie originated with Bush's predecessor. Those with BDS also seem to forget that even those who opposed the invasion of Iraq, including Joe Wilson, believed Saddam had more than just WMDs that were "useless rusted hulks."
On Burress' second point, again, I never expressed an opinion regarding whether the invasion of Iraq was a good or bad idea. In other words, contrary to his claim in his final paragraph, I offered no judgment, wacko or otherwise.
Unfortunately, BDS can cause many, even those with Ph.D.'s, to lose their senses and ability to offer cogent arguments.
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* Being limited to 250 words, I was unable to go into the evidence suggesting that Saddam's newer WMDs went to Syria prior to the invasion. Iraqi General Georges Sada has claimed that
According
to Sada, “On June 4, 2002, a three-mile-long irrigation dam, which had been
drawing water from the Orontes River in the
northwestern district of Zeyzoun, Syria, collapsed,
inundating three small villages and destroying scores of homes…. As soon as
word of the disaster was broadcast on television, help began arriving from all
over the Middle East .”
Indeed,
according to Agence France Presse (AFP) on June 9, 2002, “Iraq said Sunday it has sent 20 planeloads of
humanitarian assistance to Syria to help victims of Tuesday’s
Zeyzoun dam collapse in the north of the neighbouring country.” AFP noted that Iraq would send foodstuffs, pharmaceutical products, and “teams
of specialised doctors, surgeons and chemists to Syria .”[2]
Satellite
imagery also picked up unusual activity on the Iraq-Syria border before and during the
invasion. James R. Clapper, who headed the National Imagery
and Mapping Agency in 2003, has said U.S. intelligence tracked a large number of vehicles,
mostly civilian trucks, moving from Iraq into Syria . Clapper suggested the trucks may have contained
materiel related to Iraq ’s WMD programs.[3]
In
a January 5, 2004 letter to Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who had
defected from Syria to Western Europe, said he knew of
three sites in Syria where Iraq ’s
WMDs were kept. One of those sites was a series on tunnels under the town of
al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria .
Reportedly, the tunnels were part of an underground factory built by North Korea for producing a Syrian version of
the Scud missile.[4]
Interestingly, al-Baida is located near the Zeyzoun dam.
That
same month, David Kay, who had recently resigned as the
head of the Iraqi Survey Group, said, “[W]e know from some of the
interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some
components of Saddam’s WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria ,
and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved.”[5]
[1] Georges Sada, Saddam’s Secrets: How an Iraqi
General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein, p. 259.
[5]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/25/ixnewstop.html
