PRE-INVASION THOUGHTS ON IRAQ 12/24/02

Waiting For the Straw That Breaks the Camel's Back Christopher K. Leavitt 12/24/02

We must assume that war is inevitable. More specifically, that war with Iraq is inevitable. What we are waiting for is the straw that breaks the camel's back. A reporter on ABC news, reporting on the downing of the predator drone, finished his report by saying that the Bush administration wouldn't use this as a "pretext" for war. This illustrates one point, which is how misguided the mainstream media's distinction between the "war on terrorism" vs. the "war on Iraq" is. Saddam Hussein is a traditional Stalinist leader, a thug who seized power through murder, and maintains dominance of his country through terror. Because of the international community's intervention (and Israel's 1980 bombing of his nuclear weapons plant at Osirak), he has not become the next hitler yet. Make no mistake, he has allied himself, however tenuously, with al queda. In fact, he is building TWO of the biggest mosques in the world to attract the religious fanatics. It is said that the mosques are dedicated to Saddam, no doubt with the mandatory huge paintings of him on the walls, in contradiction of Islamic teaching. The fact is that these al queda terrorists care about as little for their god Allah, at least at the leadership level. Simply observe the remains of Osama and Mullah Omar's compounds in Afghanistan, and you can see the same "blasphemous" (to Islam) murals. They use terror, money, and even religion to control populations, great and small, for their own enrichment, at the expense of both their own people and the rest of the world.
In today's globalized culture, this must stop. Western culture has it's problems, but at least it's open to considering new ideas from other cultures. The supression of individual rights, whether economic, political or religious (or anti-religious, for those without faith) should be opposed aggressively, and the first "target of opportunity" to rid the world of this cancer is Iraq, with Iran hopefully already in the planning stage.

We should not be waiting for "the straw that breaks the camel's back"; it fell on Sept. 11, 2001. Now it's time to act.