I've been asked by the librarian at the school where I teach to write a political column from the right. She's starting a little library-newsletter and wants to include views from both sides, I assume as a regular feature. She kindly allowed me to read the column submitted by her liberal writer, which was a foaming indictment of Bush and why he should be considered a war criminal. It involved Guatanamo Bay and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, as well as pointing out what he obviously saw as the sheer lunacy of impeaching Clinton for a little sex on the side and not indicting Bush for "torturing brown skinned terror suspects". I won't reproduce it here, because it's not been published yet and I don't have his permission. When she prints it, I'll post it here.

I thought for a while about what to write, and decided not to directly respond to his column. For one thing, he won't have a chance to rebut me before publication, and it's just not fair to rip him up in a blindside. For another, I felt I could make the necessary point in the midst of a broader based column. (I'm also nearly forcibly restraining myself from ripping up his argumentation and lack of actual support for his assertations. I'm trying to be nice here. It hurts.)

Here is what I've written. The available space is small. The assumed audience is the faculty, staff and some students of a community college in rural Alabama, where the average person knows politics mostly from watching television. In other words, I'm not assuming many of them know who Joseph Wilson is. Any and all commentary is appreciated; I intend to submit this tomorrow.

Spiraling liberal hypocrisy

Here’s a great joke for you to share with former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson should you see him anytime soon:

Q: What did Saddam Hussein want for his birthday? A: Nigerian yellow cake.

“Nigerian yellow cake” refers to a form of refined uranium ore that can be used to make nuclear bombs. In early 2002, Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA – at the recommendation of his wife, a CIA employee – to investigate reports that Iraq had tried to procure yellow cake from Niger. Based on his and other reports, the intelligence community decided it was likely true, and that information formed part of the decision to go to war against Iraq last year.

During the State of the Union address in January of this year, President George Bush said the famous 16 words that caused a firestorm of protest from the left:

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

When the statement came into dispute, it quickly became the centerpiece of the anti-war left’s efforts to convince Americans and the world that President Bush and his administration deliberately lied in an effort to support the war. Wilson himself stepped forward to deny that Iraq had sought Nigerian yellow cake, and thus became the darling of the movement, appearing on television, publishing a book with “truth” in the name, and becoming a martyr by claiming that his CIA-spy wife was maliciously “outed” by the administration. This summer, he signed on as a foreign policy advisor to John Kerry, and Kerry’s campaign is paying for a website where Wilson comes out supporting Kerry – a website called “RestoreHonesty.com”.

I’ll let William Safire, in a column in The New York Times on July 19, tell you the bad news about just how much honesty there is in Wilson and his claims:

Two exhaustive government reports came out last week showing that it is the president's lionized accuser, and not Mr. Bush, who has been having trouble with the truth.

The reports specifically state that not only did Wilson lie about the yellow cake after Bush’s speech – several reliable sources indicate that Saddam did try to get yellow cake from Niger – but he also lied about what he himself said in his report. He lied about his wife, saying she did not recommend him for the mission, when the Senate report includes information from a memo written by Wilson’s wife outlining why he would be a good candidate for it. And an article in the July 26th issue of the conservative political magazine The Weekly Standard includes this quote from the Senate report:

…when asked how [Wilson] "knew" that the Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, he told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved "a little literary flair."

The anti-war liberals and leftists are so intent on demonizing Bush and “his” war that they are willing to swallow any kind of evil to make it happen. Wilson is just one example. John Kerry says he will try to bring the French into the coalition to rebuild Iraq, but says nothing about the fact that one of the reasons the French tried to block the war was because their oil companies were making millions through an oil-for-food scam worked with Saddam. No Saddam, no millions. The liberals pant for the day when Iraq and Afghanistan are handed over to the U.N. to manage, conveniently ignoring that where the U.N. is in control now, millions of dollars are disappearing into U.N. officials’ private pockets (including that of Kofi Annan’s son), and refugees in Africa are routinely terrorized and sexually brutalized by U.N. “peacekeeping” forces. There’s even evidence that the U.N. is directly responsible for the continuing battles in Iraq that are killing Iraqis and Americans daily. This from the July 19th New York Post:

American officials believe that millions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food program are now being used to help fund the bloody rebel campaign against U.S. forces and the new Iraqi government, The Post has learned.

Apparently it is “all about the ooooiiiillll” for some people, and they don’t really care about the “brown-skinned” humans who are in their way. But it’s not President Bush or the Republicans who want to give them control over millions more innocent lives.

Perhaps we should have a new bumper sticker for the John Kerry for President crowd to send to Niger, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Bosnia, and any other country the liberals and the U.N. want to control:

“Let them eat yellow cake."

I did a search for the information on TotalElfFina, the French oil company, and didn't find it. Do any of you know a source that speaks of their efforts to block the war, and the ways they benefited while Saddam was in power? Also, any links to the U.N. "peacekeeping" force atrocities. I'll keep looking too.

I wish I could see the liberal columnist when he reads my column.

Heh.