Should the US seek International approval for Foreign Policy actions?

[BigBadBrian]

John Kerry obviously thinks so. GWB doesn't. Kerry thinks he can bring alienated European "allies" back to the table and possibly help out in Iraq. Discuss.

[Warham]

If Kerry had it his way, when North Korea would be about ready to fire a nuke over here, he'd be trying to go to the UN for the umpteenth time to get a resolution passed, most likely vetoed by the French and Russians.

No thanks.

If North Korea is getting ready to fire off a nuke, I prefer Bush's way. 'Knock it off, or we'll knock you off.'

[Wayne L.]

If John Kerry wants international approval to invade a foreign country for any reason as he said in the presidential debate then he has no right to win the election possibly against George W. Bush or call himself an American.

[FORD]

Bottom line, assholes...

The BCE accused Saddam Hussein of violating a UN resolution, which by it's very definition is the law of an International body. Therefore, such a law is to be enforced by that International body. As it happens, Saddam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction, so there's a question of whether he violated the resolution to begin with.

Of course he may have very well violated others. But then, so has Israel and I don't see PNAC pushing to disarm them.

Gee.... go figure

Cue asslip to come out of his dungeon at PNAC headquarters and call me a "Jewhater".....

[Big Train]

Bottom line, assholes??

Gee, Dickhead, they all DID agree about the use of force in regard to Iraq. He violated international resolutions for 12 fuckin years. Of course, those nations had a stake in keeping him in power, so they liked clintons tough talk, no action policies.

We did not need anyone's ok to go in there and neither does any other country. If there is an issue, conflicts arise, they way it always has and will be. We tried to play the diplomatic game and it failed. Kerry's useless statements hold no water.

[ELVIS]

Originally posted by FORD
Bottom line, assholes...

so there's a question of whether he violated the resolution to begin with.

You're an idiot...

[FORD]

You guys don't get it, do you?

Junior just established a very dangerous precedent. What would happen if China decided that Junior was a maniacal dictator with weapons of mass destruction who needs to be disarmed.

If Junior really felt that Saddam was a threat to the US - or other countries then he should have gone about it the right way, with the majority of the world backing him up. His dad was able to figure that out..

[LoungeMachine]

Here's MY take, and BBB and E can rip me all they want.

Where do we stop?

At the SOTU address the shrub spoke of the Axis of Evil

the OTHER 2 sides of this trifecta HAVE WMD.

Are we now going to invade?

If not, why the double standard?

Why are we such close allies with the Saudis? They aren't exactly beacons of freedom and democracy, AND they support terrorism.

Why are we not going to the UN to disarm NK or Iran?

Again, why the selective double standards??????

Please explain to this Liberal what the litmus test is BEFORE we invade and destroy a country.

[John Ashcroft]

Cause we can't take on all tyrants in the world at this particular time.

We simply need to start at the top and work down.

And Ford, Iraq has been in violation of the cease fire agreement from Gulf War 1 for years. Technically, and accurately, this is simply an extention of Gulf War 1, regardless of U.N. resolutions that have been shit out in the past few years.

Do you know how many U.S. aircraft have been fired upon patrolling the no fly zones established after the first Gulf War? Does that sound like an act of war to you? What if he hit one? What do you think would happen if North Korea took shots at our aircraft patrolling the DMZ?

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by John Ashcroft
Cause we can't take on all tyrants in the world at this particular time.

We simply need to start at the top and work down.

?

Gee, silly me.

I thought this was a war on terrorists, not tyrants.

So you are saying it is our mission TO RID THE WORLD OF TYRANTS?

You're an idiot. plain and simple.

Start at the top?

Saddam was THE TOP?????????????????///


ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH?

If you think Saddam was the most dangerous leader in the world, then you're a dolt. Borderline retarded.

mission accomplished my ass

If THIS is how we take out a cluser fuck of a country like Iraq, I cant WAIT to see our plan to invade and disarm N.Korea and Iran.

Get a fucking clue.

This war has NOTHING to do with removing a tyrant.

And to think I once thought you were somewhat bright.

[John Ashcroft]

Dude, calling me an idiot doesn't validate your misguided positions.

Saddam had so many ties to terrorists and terrorism that only a fool would chose to ignore them. Not to mention, look which countries surround Iraq. Don'tcha think that'd be a good place to plant a seed of democracy? Are you that narrow minded that you can't see the big picture? Are you that ate up with team-sport politics that you'd ignore obvious benefits to U.S. security just to see your team win? That's the problem with you liberals, you're "all thrust, no vector". You're guided by nothing but emotions and sound-bites. You couldn't make a hard decision to save your fucking life! All you care about is today, and maybe tonight. No fucking concept of strategical defenses at all.

If it were up to people like you, Europe would be under the iron grip of the U.S.S.R., and there'd be a whole shit load more mass graves to uncover.

You're a fucking waste of time dude. You've got no concept of national defense. I'd like to know what you think you know about the subject. Lay it out. Come on.

What qualifies you to proclaim your "expertise" on just what America should and shouldn't do in regards to national defense. Where have you been in the world?

[John Ashcroft]

In the mean time, here's some stuff to chew on you fucking child.

The Iraqi connection

As evidence linking Iraqi intelligence to the 11 September hijackers begins to emerge, David Rose gathers testimony from former Baghdad agents and the CIA to reveal the secrets of Saddam's terror training camp

War on Terrorism: Observer special

David Rose
Observer

Sunday November 11, 2001


His friends call him Abu Amin, 'the father of honesty'. At 43, he is one of Iraq's most highly decorated intelligence officers: a special forces veteran who organised killings behind Iranian lines during the first Gulf war, who then went on to a senior post in the unit known as 'M8' - the department for 'special operations', such as sabotage, terrorism and murder. This is the man, Colonel Muhammed Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani, whom Mohamed Atta flew halfway across the world to meet in Prague last April, five months before piloting his hijacked aircraft into the World Trade Centre.

Evidence is mounting that this meeting was not an isolated event. The Observer has learnt that Atta's talks with al-Ani were only one of several apparent links between Iraq, the 11 September hijackers and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Senior US intelligence sources say the CIA has 'credible information' that in the spring of this year, at least two other members of the hijacking team also met known Iraqi intelligence agents outside the United States. They are believed to be Atta's closest associates and co-leaders, Marwan al-Shehri and Ziad Jarrah, the other two members of the 'German cell ' who lived with Atta in Hamburg in the late 1990s.

In the strongest official statement to date alleging Iraqi involvement in the new wave of anti-Western terrorism, on Friday night Milos Zeman, the Czech Prime Minister, told reporters and Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, that the Czech authorities believed Atta and al-Ani met expressly to discuss a bombing. He said they were plotting to destroy the Prague-based Radio Free Europe with a truck stuffed with explosives, adding: 'Yes, you cannot exclude also the hypothesis that they discussed football, ice hockey, weather and other topics. But I am not so sure.

In Washington and Whitehall, a furious political battle is raging over the scope of the anti-terrorist war, and whether it should eventually include action against Iraq. According to the Foreign Office, British Ministers have responded to this prospect with 'horror', arguing that an attack on Saddam Hussein would cause terrible civilian casualties and cement anti-Western anger across Middle East.

Meanwhile, Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, heads a clique of determined, powerful hawks, most of them outside the administration - among them James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA. The doves argue that an al-Qaeda-Iraq link is improbable, given the sharp ideological differences between Saddam's secular Baathism and Islamic fundamentalism. They also say that claims of Iraqi involvement are being driven by the agenda of the hawks - a group which has for years been seeking to finish the job left undone at the end of the Gulf war in 1991.

Nevertheless, Saddam does not lack a plausible motive: revenge for his expulsion from Kuwait in 1991, and for the continued sanctions and Western bombing of his country ever since. In this febrile atmosphere, hard information about who ordered the 11 September attacks remains astonishingly scarce.

US investigators have traced the movements of the 19 hijackers going back years, and have amassed a detailed picture of who did what inside the conspiracy. Yet what lay beyond the hijackers is an intelligence black hole. If they had a support network in America, none of its members has been traced, and among the hundreds of telephone records and emails the investigators have recovered, nothing gets close to identifying those ultimately responsible.

It still seems almost certain, intelligence sources say, that parts of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network actively backed the conspiracy: about half of the estimated $500,000 the hijackers used reportedly came from al-Qaeda sources, while some of the terrorists are believed to have passed through bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. At the same time, however, evidence is emerging of direct Iraqi links with the US hijackers in particular, and with radical Islamic terror groups in general.

In the early period after the attacks, Western intelligence agencies said they knew of nothing to suggest an Iraqi connection. That position has now changed. A top US analyst - a serving intelligence official with no connection to the 'hawks' around Wolfowitz - told The Observer: 'You should think of this thing as a spectrum: with zero Iraqi involvement at one end, and 100 per cent Iraqi direction and control at the other. The scenario we now find most plausible is somewhere in the middle range - significant Iraqi assistance and some involvement.'

Last night, Whitehall sources made clear that parts of British intelligence had reached the same conclusion. Uncomfortable as it may be, this reassessment is having a political impact. Last month, when the CIA was still telling him it did not believe Iraq was involved in 11 September, Powell said there were 'no plans' to attack Iraq. Last Thursday, speaking in Kuwait, he abruptly reversed his earlier pronouncements. He promised that after dealing with bin Laden and Afghanistan, 'we will turn our attention to terrorism throughout the world, and nations such as Iraq'.

The FBI is now sure that Atta, the Egyptian who had studied in Germany, was the hijackers' overall leader. He personally handled more than $100,000 of the plot's funds, more than any other conspirator, and he made seven foreign trips in 2000 and 2001 - all of which appear to have had some operational significance. Investigators lay heavy stress on a captured al-Qaeda manual which emphasises the value of conducting discussions about pending terrorist attacks face to face, rather than by electronic means.

Two of those trips were to meet al-Ani in Prague. The Iraqi's profile has been supplied by defectors from Saddam's intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, who are now being guarded by the London-based opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC). CIA sources have confirmed its crucial details. 'There's really no doubt that al-Ani is a very senior Iraqi agent,' one source said.

The Observer has interviewed two of the defectors. They began to tell their stories at the beginning of October, and have been debriefed extensively by the FBI and the CIA. Al-Ani's experience in covert 'wet jobs' (assassinations), gives his meetings with Atta a special significance: his expertise was killing.

According to the defectors, he has an unusual ability to change his appearance and operate under cover. One defector recalls a meeting in the early 1990s when al-Ani had long, silver hair, and wore jeans, silver chains and sunglasses. Al-Ani explained he was about to undertake a mission which required him to look like a Western hippy. A member of Saddam's Baathist party since his youth, al-Ani also has extensive experience working with radical Islamists such as Mohamed Atta.

Since the 1980s, Saddam has organised numerous Islamic conferences in Baghdad, expressly for the Mukhabarat to find foreign recruits. Al-Ani has been seen at at least two of them. On one occasion, the defectors say, he took on the cover of a Muslim cleric at a fundamentalists' conference in Karachi, presenting himself as a delegate from the Iraqi shrine of the Sufi mystic Abdel-Qadir al-Gaylani, whose followers are numerous in Pakistan.

Last Wednesday, Iraq made its own response to the news of the meetings between al-Ani and Atta. Tariq Aziz, Saddam's Deputy Prime Minister, denied Iraq had anything to do with the hijackings, saying: 'Even if that [the meetings] happened, that would mean nothing, for a diplomat could meet many people during his duty, whether he was at a restaurant or elsewhere, and even if he met Mohamed Atta, that would not mean the Iraqi diplomat was involved.'

Yet the striking thing about the meetings is the lengths to which Atta went in order to attend them. In June last year, he flew to Prague from Hamburg, only to be refused entry because he had failed to obtain a visa. Three days later, now equipped with the paperwork, Atta was back for a visit of barely 24 hours. He flew from the Czech Republic to the US, where he began to train as pilot. In early April 2001, when the conspiracy's planning must have been nearing its final stages, Atta was back in Prague for a further brief visit - a journey of considerable inconvenience.

On 17 April, the Czechs expelled al-Ani, who had diplomatic cover, as a hostile spy. Last night, a senior US diplomatic source told The Observer that Atta was not the only suspected al-Qaeda member who met al-Ani and other Iraqi agents in Prague. He said the Czechs monitored at least two further such meetings in the months before 11 September.

The senior US intelligence source said the CIA believed that two other hijackers, al-Shehri and Jarrah, also met known Iraqi intelligence officers outside the US in the run-up to the atrocities. It is understood these meetings took place in the United Arab Emirates - where Iraq maintains its largest 'illegal', or non-diplomatic, cover intelligence operation, most of it devoted to oil exports and busting economic sanctions.

The source added that Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which has now effectively merged with al-Qaeda, maintained regular contacts with Iraq for many years. He confirmed the claims first made by the Iraqi National Congress - that towards the end of 1998, Farouk Hijazi, Iraq's ambassador to Turkey and a key member of the Mukhabarat leadership - went to Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he met bin Laden.

The FBI believes many of the 11 hijackers who made up the conspiracy's 'muscle', Saudi Arabians who entered the US at a late stage and whose task was to overpower the aircrafts' passengers and crew, trained at Afghan camps run by al-Qaeda. But they have no details: no times or places where any of these individuals learnt their skills. Meanwhile, it is now becoming clear that al-Qaeda is not the only organisation providing terrorist training for Muslim fundamentalists. Since the early 1990s, courses of this type have also been available in Iraq. At the beginning of October, two INC activists in London travelled to eastern Turkey. They had been told that a Mukhabarat colonel had crossed the border through Kurdistan and was ready to defect. The officer - codenamed Abu Zeinab - had extraordinary information about terrorist training in Iraq. In a safe house in Ankara, the two London-based activists took down Zeinab's story. He had worked at a site which was already well known - Salman Pak, a large camp on a peninsular formed by a loop of the Tigris river south of Baghdad.

However, what Zeinab had to say about the southern part of the camp was new. There, he said, separated from the rest of the facilities by a razor-wire fence, was a barracks used to house Islamic radicals, many of them Saudis from bin Laden's Wahhabi sect, but also Egyptians, Yemenis, and other non-Iraqi Arabs.

Unlike the other parts of Salman Pak, Zeinab said the foreigners' camp was controlled directly by Saddam Hussein. In a telephone interview with The Observer, Zeinab described the culture clash which took place when secular Baathists tried to train fundamentalists: 'It was a nightmare! A very strange experience. These guys would stop and insist on praying to Allah five times a day when we had training to do. The instructors wouldn't get home till late at night, just because of all this praying.'

Asked whether he believed the foreigners' camp had trained members of al-Qaeda, Zeinab said: 'All I can say is that we had no structure to take on these people inside the regime. The camp was for organisations based abroad.' One of the highlights of the six-month curriculum was training to hijack aircraft using only knives or bare hands. According to Zeinab, women were also trained in these techniques. Like the 11 September hijackers, the students worked in groups of four or five.

In Ankara, Zeinab was debriefed by the FBI and CIA for four days. Meanwhile he told the INC that if they wished to corroborate his story, they should speak to a man who had political asylum in Texas - Captain Sabah Khodad, who had worked at Salman Pak in 1994-5. He too has now told his story to US investigators. In an interiew with The Observer, he echoed Zeinab's claims: 'The foreigners' training includes assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking. They were strictly separated from the rest of us. To hijack planes they were taught to use small knives. The method used on 11 September perfectly coincides with the training I saw at the camp. When I saw the twin towers attack, the first thought that came into my head was, "this has been done by graduates of Salman Pak".'

Zeinab and Khodad said the Salman Pak students practised their techniques in a Boeing 707 fuselage parked in the foreigners' part of the camp. Yesterday their story received important corroboration from Charles Duelfer, former vice chairman of Unscom, the UN weapons inspection team.

Duelfer said he visited Salman Pak several times, landing by helicopter. He saw the 707, in exactly the place described by the defectors. The Iraqis, he said, told Unscom it was used by police for counter-terrorist training. 'Of course we automatically took out the word "counter",' he said. 'I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq. Like, derrrrrr! I mean, what, actually, do you expect? Iraq presents a long-term strategic threat. Unfortunately, the US is not very good at recognising long-term strategic threats.'

At the end of September, Donald Rumsfeld, the far from doveish US Defence Secretary, told reporters there was 'no evidence' that Iraq was involved in the atrocities. That judgment is slowly being rewritten.

Many still suspect the anthrax which has so far killed four people in America has an ultimate Iraqi origin: in contrast to recent denials made by senior FBI officials, CIA sources say there simply is not enough material to be sure. However, it does not look likely that the latest anthrax sample, sent to a newspaper in Karachi, can have come from the source recently posited by the FBI - a right-wing US militant. 'The sophistication of the stuff that has been found represents a level of technique and knowledge that in the past has been associated only with governments,' Duelfer said. 'If it's not Iraq, there aren't many alternatives.'

If the emerging evidence of Iraqi involvement in 11 September becomes clearer or more conclusive, the consequences will be immense. In the words of a State Department spokesman after Powell's briefing by the Czech leader on Friday: 'If there is clear evidence connecting the World Trade Centre attacks to Iraq, that would be a very grave development.'

At worst, the anti-terrorist coalition would currently be bombing the wrong country. At best, the world would see that some of President Bush's closest advisers - his father, Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney, to name but three - made a catastrophic error in 1991, when they ended the Gulf war without toppling Saddam.

The case for trying to remove him now might well seem unanswerable. In that scenario, the decisions Western leaders have had to make in the past two months would seem like a trivial prelude.

Link: here

Saddam killed Abu Nidal over al-Qa'eda row

Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist, was murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein after refusing to train al-Qa'eda fighters based in Iraq, The Telegraph can reveal.

Despite claims by Iraqi officials that Abu Nidal committed suicide after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Saddam, Western diplomats now believe that he was killed for refusing to reactivate his international terrorist network.

The head of Iraqi intelligence holds photographs purporting to prove Abu Nidal's 'suicide'
According to reports received from Iraqi opposition groups, Abu Nidal had been in Baghdad for months as Saddam's personal guest, and was being treated for a mild form of skin cancer.

While in Baghdad, Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, came under pressure from Saddam to help train groups of al-Qa'eda fighters who moved to northern Iraq after fleeing Afghanistan. Saddam also wanted Abu Nidal to carry out attacks against the US and its allies.

When Abu Nidal refused, Saddam ordered his intelligence chiefs to assassinate him. He was shot dead last weekend when Iraqi security forces burst into his apartment in central Baghdad. The body was taken to the hospital where he had had cancer treatment.

The Iraqi authorities later claimed that Abu Nidal had killed himself when confronted with evidence that he was involved in a plot to overthrow Saddam.

"There is no doubt that Abu Nidal was murdered on Saddam's orders," said a US official who has studied the reports. "He paid the price for not co-operating with Saddam's wishes."

Last week, American intelligence officials revealed that several high-ranking al-Qa'eda members had moved to northern Iraq where they had linked up with Iraqi intelligence officials.

It now transpires that Saddam was hoping to take advantage of Abu Nidal's presence in Baghdad to persuade him to use his considerable expertise in terrorist techniques to train al-Qa'eda fighters.

Abu Nidal worked closely with Saddam during the late 1970s and early 1980s to carry out a number of terrorist outrages in the Middle East and Europe, including the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London in 1982.

In recent years, Abu Nidal, who has been ill for many years, had scaled down his terror operations.

With the prospect increasing of the US launching a military campaign to overthrow Saddam, however, the Iraqi dictator was keen to combine Abu Nidal's expertise with the enthusiasm of al-Qa'eda's fanatical fighters to launch a fresh wave of terror attacks. In this way, Saddam hoped to disrupt Washington's plans to overthrow him.

The presence of al-Qa'eda fighters in Iraq has become a source of great concern in Washington.

US Defence Department officials said that a number of very senior al-Qa'eda members was now based in northern Iraq close to the Iranian border at Halabja.

Although Iraqi officials have denied any knowledge of the al-Qa'eda fighters' presence, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, said last week that it was highly unlikely that they could have entered Iraq without Saddam's knowledge.

"There are al-Qa'eda in a number of locations in Iraq," he said. "In a vicious, repressive dictatorship that exercises near total control over its population, it's very hard to imagine that the government is not aware of what is taking place in the country."

Link: here fuckwad

Abu Nidal murder trail leads directly to Iraqi regime

It has now become very clear and much confirmed that the Iraqi regime headed by Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the assassination of the Palestinian terrorist Sabri al-Bana, known to the world as Abu Nidal.

A wide-ranging Jane’s investigation into the incident, gathering information from various official and non-official sources in Ramallah, Amman, Baghdad, London, Washington and Beirut, has confirmed the Iraqi regime’s involvement in the killing of Abu Nidal, whose death in a Baghdad apartment from gunshot wounds was announced last Friday (16 August).

So why has Saddam acted now? The best explanation is that the Iraqi dictator is now feeling the pressure from the ongoing US deliberations over a potential invasion to topple his regime. In any such adventure, the anti-Saddam elements within Iraq would most likely play an important role in turning the tide against Saddam. He has therefore moved to eradicate those dangerous elements, both as a pre-emptive measure to protect his position and as an example to other prospective internal enemies still at large.

Given Abu Nidal’s propensity to ‘go with the smart money’ to survive and his past treachery during the 1990-91 Gulf War (he sided with Kuwait), any suggestion of him plotting against the regime would have been enough to sign his death warrant.

Various Palestinian and Arab officials and sources contacted by Jane’s have confirmed the reports of Abu Nidal’s death in his Baghdad apartment under “mysterious circumstances”. It remains unclear, however, whether Iraqi agents killed him or whether he committed suicide. His body bore several gunshot wounds, according to Palestinian sources.

A senior Iraqi official said on 20 August that Abu Nidal, who had returned to Iraq several months earlier bearing a false Yemeni passport and was placed under house arrest, killed himself after Iraqi agents accused him of conspiring with anti-Iraqi forces, including Kuwait [and Saudi Arabia]. Iraqi intelligence had apparently confronted Abu Nidal with evidence of his involvement with foreign agents to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime, with an Iraqi senior official claiming that classified documents and plans concerning a US attack on Iraq were found in his house.

Iraqi intelligence agents had followed Abu Nidal to check on his alleged dealings with the Gulf states, according to Palestinian sources in Ramallah on 20 August, who said that Iraqi intelligence arrested three of Abu Nidal's men early last week before raiding his Baghdad house late on 14 August. The raid sparked clashes between the agents and Abu Nidal's guards, two of whom were wounded, the Palestinian official said. Abu Nidal then ran into another room where he “committed suicide”. The Iraqi agents apparently arrested three more of Abu Nidal's assistants, later releasing two of them.

Tahhir Jalil Haboush, the head of Iraqi Intelligence, told reporters in Baghdad on 21 August that Abu Nidal shot himself as Iraqi officials waited to take him to court. He was then rushed to hospital where he died eight hours later. Haboush was asked what day Abu Nidal died, but did not reply.

Link: There's still more if you can understand all these big words

[rustoffa]

Originally posted by Wayne L.
If John Kerry wants international approval to invade a foreign country for any reason as he said in the presidential debate then he has no right to win the election possibly against George W. Bush or call himself an American.

Kerry's mind-numbing disregard of US sovereignty is exactly that.

Pray hard.

[Big Train]

Originally posted by FORD
You guys don't get it, do you?


If Junior really felt that Saddam was a threat to the US - or other countries then he should have gone about it the right way, with the majority of the world backing him up. His dad was able to figure that out..

Check the meaningless documents they ALL signed, I would say they kinda sorta agreed. Nobody thought we would go THROUGH with it though...

[John Ashcroft]

And here's an educated op ed to digest.

See Ya, Iraq?

"War is a series of catastrophes that results in victory." — Georges Clemenceau

A few conservative strategists — from the Financial Times to Edward Luttwak — have recently floated the idea of a strategic withdrawal from Iraq. "Exit strategy" is suddenly the realist buzz. In addition, Clintonites — for a time staying low as scrutiny turned to their past appeasement of terrorists in the 1990s — now boldly proclaim that Iraq is another Vietnam (notwithstanding 49,000 fewer American dead, no nuclear Soviet Union or China in the neighborhood, and no army of three million insurrectionists under the banner of worldwide socialist revolution).

Nevertheless, given our successful removal of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent increasing chaos in the country, the idea may grow popular to re-declare "Mission Accomplished" — and then quietly leave. We have fulfilled our goals of ensuring that a Baathist Iraq no longer threatens its neighbors or the strategic Gulf states, and can now let Najaf fight Fallujah rather than both of them us. Or so the new wisdom goes.

Furthermore, should another Saddam-like tyrant arise from the ashes, we can always GPS him back into oblivion. That is much easier than losing another 1,000 Americans in an attempt to craft consensual government at the price of some $87 billion in aid.

Because such ideas are sometimes offered by the strategic establishment, and are couched in terms of our self-interest, many Americans may find them appealing — especially since the daily televised fare from Iraq is little more than fist-shaking militants full of ingratitude, if not hatred, toward the United States, mixed with RPGs and suicide bombings.

Yet leaving unilaterally from Iraq would be a tragic mistake. We have already done something like that before — many times. What rippled out afterwards was not pretty. American helicopters flying off the embassy roof in Saigon in 1975 gave us the climate for the Soviets in Afghanistan, Communists in Central America, and embassy hostage-taking in Tehran. Ignoring murders in Lebanon, New York, East Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, or lobbing an occasional cruise missile as tit-for-tat payback when terrorists harvested one too many expendable Americans abroad, ensured us September 11. In our loony world, losing credible deterrence (and we would) is an invitation for disaster — as bin Laden himself illustrated when he logically thought that the toppling of the World Trade Center would be followed by another Black Hawk Down American pullback.

Leaving Afghanistan to its own misery after the Soviet retreat, not going to Baghdad in 1991, turning boats around from Haiti, or quietly ducking out of Mogadishu all were less messy in the short term, but in the long term left even greater chaos. The ultimate wages were the Taliban, 350,000 sorties for over a decade above Iraq, the current mess in the Caribbean, and terrorist havens and worse in Africa. We forget how often in history a perceived stumble or the half-measure only emboldens enemies to try what they otherwise would not.

In contrast, on those occasions when we have shown the patience to stay engaged after victory — in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Panama, or the Balkans — there was less chance that Americans would be left with either perpetual autocratic enemies or terrorist sanctuaries.

We also have a moral stake in Iraq, whose people have suffered from 30 years of Baathist state terror and terrible fatalities in three losing wars. Our defeat of Iraq in 1991, our subsequent abandonment of the Kurds and Shiites to a wounded Saddam Hussein, twelve years of occupying Iraqi airspace, the corrupt U.N. embargo, and the recent final defeat of the Baathists brought untold misery to the Iraqi people.

In contrast, for the last year and a half, the United States has paid a high price to ensure the Iraqis a chance for the first humane and civilized government in the entire Arab Middle East. If it was callous to abandon the Shiites and Kurds in 1991, it is certainly right now to ensure that Saddam's gulag is not superseded by either a Taliban theocracy or a Lebanon-like cesspool.

Finally, for all the media-inspired pessimism, progress continues in Iraq. Despite all the killing, a logic of freedom persists, one that is slowly becoming a way of life for millions and that cannot be derailed by media-savvy murderers. Scheduled elections are on track. A culture of personal liberty is sprouting up, from Internet cafes to secular schools. Kurdistan is emerging as a federated republic. Indeed, Kurdish good will is proof that America wants no one's oil, promotes democracy, and is becoming once again a dependable friend. When the United States has chosen to confront the militias, it has won handily. It can do so again in Fallujah and Najaf should the interim government wish a final victory — and our political leadership at last allows the Marines to eradicate terrorist killers who have turned the city of Fallujah into a murderous sewer.

It is always difficult for those involved to determine the pulse of any ongoing war. The last 90 days in the Pacific theater were among the most costly of World War II, as we incurred 50,000 casualties on Okinawa just weeks before the Japanese collapse. December 1944 and January 1945 were the worst months for the American army in Europe, bled white repelling Hitler's last gasp in the Battle of the Bulge. Contemporaries shuddered, after observing those killing fields, that the war would go on for years more. The summer of 1864 convinced many that Grant and Lincoln were losers, and that McClellan alone could end the conflict by what would amount to a negotiated surrender of Northern war aims.

It is true that parts of Iraq are unsafe and that terrorists are flowing into the country; but there is no doubt that the removal of Saddam Hussein is bringing matters to a head. Islamic fascists are now fighting openly and losing battles, and are increasingly desperate as they realize the democratization process slowly grinds ahead leaving them and what they have to offer by the wayside. Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and others must send aid to the terrorists and stealthy warriors into Iraq, for the battle is not just for Baghdad but for their futures as well. The world's attention is turning to Syria's occupation of Lebanon and Iran's nukes, a new scrutiny predicated on American initiatives and persistence, and easily evaporated by a withdrawal from Iraq. So by taking the fight to the heart of darkness in Saddam's realm, we have opened the climactic phase of the war, and thereupon can either win or lose far more than Iraq.

The world grasps this, and thus slowly is waking up and starting to see that if it walks and sounds like an Islamic fascist — whether in Russia, Spain, Istanbul, Israel, Iraq, or India — it really is an Islamic fascist, with the now-familiar odious signature of car bombings, suicide belts, and incoherent communiqués mixed with self-pity and passive-aggressive bluster.

For all these reasons and more, something like "See ya, wouldn't want to be ya" is the absolute worst prescription for Iraq — both for America and those Iraqis who are counting on us in their historic efforts to reclaim their country from barbarism. Amid the daily car bombings in Iraq, murder in Russia, and slaughter in the Middle East, we cannot see much hope — but it is there, and we are winning on a variety of fronts as the world continues to shrink for the Islamic fascist and those who would abet him.

Link: Does it hurt your little brain yet?