Who said this?

What if Saddam Hussein “fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.”

“If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.” “Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal.”

If you answered “George W. Bush” or “Colin Powell”, you’re wrong.

OK, now who said this?

He [Hussein] has maximum incentive not to use this stuff. If we go, he has maximum incentive to use it because he knows he’s going to lose.

The answer to both questions is Bill Clinton (from 1998 and from 2002, respectively). The web site efreedomnews.com has these and other Clinton, Daschle and John Kerry quotes from then and now. Required reading, especially for Democrats who backed their guys 110% then and 110% now. The schizophrenia is amazing, not to mention convenient.

Once again, what a difference an administration makes.

Tony Schinella, who has a blog called Politizine, called me on an error I made on February 24th. I said,

Did you hear a story about Iraqi-Americans petitioning the Bush administration to topple Saddam Hussein?

Yeah, neither did I. Wonder why.

The link points to a item in the Detroit News that reported on an event organized by the Iraqi Forum for Democracy in which Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was the guest speaker. The members of this forum were urging him to topple Saddam Hussein, in response to all the anti-war protests.

Tony said, in response to me, “Yeah, I did, FoxNews, MSNBC, and CSPAN were live with Wolfowitz in the town hall meeting promoting the idea.” So apparently this meeting, or some other meeting with a similar tone, did get covered by some of the cable networks. But let’s look at the coverage for a second.

• Fox’s coverage doesn’t surprise me. “Fair and balanced” means showing both sides of the issue and they cover both the anti-war and pro-liberation crowds in a more balanced fashion than anybody.
• Good to see MSNBC covering all angles, although their ratings are pretty much in the basement.
• CSPAN covers everything if it’s political and especially if it involves a high-level cabinet position.

The only real surprise for me here is the MSNBC coverage. Good to see, but virtually inconsequential. However, conspicuous by their absence were CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC. A search for any mention of “Iraqi Forum for Democracy” and “Wolfowitz” on Google News did not reveal coverage by any of those networks, at least on their web sites. There is still the possibility that Peter Jennings gave it a few seconds of air time, but the point was, and still is, that the networks give far, far more press to anti-war views than those who believe a war is necessary. (The Media Research Center has been chronicling many instances of this bias lately, especially with regards to ABC News.) Look what it took to get MSNBC to cover this unique pro-liberation angle; a personal visit by a top cabinet member. Would they have covered this event if, instead of inviting Wolfowitz, the Iraqi Forum for Democracy had just staged an anti-Saddam protest? I think a safe bet would be “No”. And even with Wolfowitz’s presence, the other networks didn’t find it worthy of mention.

In fact, with all the attacks on Fox News that they’re just shills for the Republicans, it’s interesting to note that almost all of the other networks that consider themselves balanced didn’t bother covering this. Fox covers all angles, and they’re called “biased”, while the other networks ignore or minimize conservatives and they call themselves “fair”.

So yes, my personal experience wasn’t enough when determining whether or not the networks were biased in coverage of this issue. But given more information, the picture doesn’t look better. It looks worse.

Seems Mary McGrory wasn’t quite convinced by Colin Powell. Well, she does believe everything he said about Hussein’s poisons and all, she just had to clarify that she doesn’t think it’s worth going to war over. I guess we should just sit around another 12 years to let inspections “work”.

It’s amazing how much evil the left will allow to continue under the excuse of “but war isn’t the answer”. “Peace” has had it’s chance, but McGrory et. al. are more than happy to let Saddam continue to oppress his people and continue to murder them, just as long as any al Qaeda connection is tenuous, or he’s not directly linked to a nuke in San Francisco. If it’s Iraqis he’s killing, there’s no reason to fret.

Racism? Head in the sand? Lack of common sense? Or what other malady worse than these can possibly explain letting a murderer continue his ways unabated?

Larry Elder has a great “then and now” article today about how those criticizing Bush now over Iraq were singing a very different tune then when Clinton was going into Kosovo. Quotes by both men sound as though they’re talking about the same set of events, but actor Mike Farrell does a 180. As Elder says, “What a difference an administration makes.”

Today’s wake-up call for some of the anti-war folks:

LONDON (AP) – Some of the peace activists who went to Iraq to serve as human shields in the event of war returned home, fearing for their safety, a spokesman said Sunday.

Gosh, really? Safety concerns? Who’d’a thought!

“The aim was always a mass migration and if we had had five to ten thousand people here there would never be a war,” he said. “We do not have those numbers.”

First of all, they’re fantasizing if they think they can stop a war by simply standing there. Saddam must be disarmed, and he’s chosen his own path by not doing so by now. A bunch of misguided people with their heads in the clouds wouldn’t stop that.

Further, they haven’t even the tiniest percentage of those numbers…

The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported that nine of the 11 British human shields in the bus convoy had left Baghdad. Briggs said about a dozen Britons remained in Iraq alongside several dozens from other countries.

Where are all the protestors? At home in their free countries, perhaps? Most likely being protected by weapons of mass destruction that their own heads of state would never use on them.

He told Britain’s Press Association news agency that Iraq limited the sites that human shields could visit. “Now we are being told we cannot go to certain sites, such as hospitals, so we are reassessing our strategy,” he said.

Once again, the human shields are shocked–SHOCKED–that Hussein would be using them as pawns to his own advantage. As I noted before, they find they’re being placed at location suspiciously close to army bases. These folks leaving Iraq must be as disillusioned as Sean Penn was to find out his words had been twisted by Hussein. When will they learn?

On Friday, the head of Sweden’s largest peace organization urged human shields to leave Iraq, saying they were being used for propaganda purposes by Saddam Hussein. Maria Ermanno, chairwoman of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, cited reports that Iraqi officials were arranging transportation, accommodations and news conferences for the human shields. “To go down to Iraq and live and act there on the regime’s expense, then you’re supporting a terrible dictator. I think that method is entirely wrong,” Ermanno told Swedish Radio.

Well, apparently they can be taught. Let’s just hope the lesson spreads quickly.

The next time a Democrat says that we’re not winning the war on terror, remember this article about the recent capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of 9-11. There have been other catches in the past year and a half as well, some publicized, others not, but the Bush administration has not been idle, as much as the wishfully-thinking Democrat presidential hopefuls would like you to believe.

For perspective, here’s a quote from Ann Coulter’s latest commentary:

Hillary did not object to precipitous action against Iraq when her husband bombed it on the day of his scheduled impeachment. President Clinton attacked Saddam Hussein without first asking approval from the United Nations, the U.S. Congress or even France. But now we have a president who wants to attack Iraq for purposes of national security rather than his own personal interests, and Hillary thinks he’s being rash. President Bush has gotten a war resolution from Congress, yet another U.N. Security Council resolution, and we’ve been talking about this war for 14 months. But he’s being precipitous.

Others have been noting that Sheryl Crowe, who had the “No War” guitar strap at the Grammys, was performing for the troops in the (non-UN-sanctioned, non-Congress-sanctioned, non-France-sanctioned) incursion into Bosnia. No sign of her guitar strap there (unless she thought the troops she was entertaining were just there on holiday).

A large percentage of the anti-war crowd (and likely the vast majority of those from the Hollywood left) are not so much anti-war as they are anti-Bush, in a knee-jerk reaction of Cecil B. DeMille proportions. This isn’t an expression of principle for them as much as it is not liking it when their guy’s not in office. Plain and simple.

So what are those 18 UN resolutions that have been passed against Iraq? Juan Paxety lists them all, with links to the texts. He notes that CNN is calling the one introduced yesterday the “second” resolution, when it’s actually the 19th.

Did you hear a story about Iraqi-Americans petitioning the Bush administration to topple Saddam Hussein?

Yeah, neither did I. Wonder why.

Some of the volunteer “human shields” are shocked–SHOCKED–to discover the targets they’re being asked to protect are rather closely situated to Iraqi army bases. Imagine that. An article in the London Telegraph (free registration required) informs us that, in one case…

Fifteen volunteers from the first 200 shields are moving into a bunker at the South Baghdad Electricity Plant in an effort to deter attack by America and its allies. However some of the shields yesterday questioned Iraq’s selection of the power plant, after discovering that it is situated next to an army base.

Since the shields’ first visit to examine their new quarters, sandbags and unmanned check points had been erected around the plant. Asked about the neighbouring Rasheed military base, an Iraqi official said: “Don’t worry, it is a small army camp.”

Heh heh…pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.