Demo-gogues still at it...

By Mark Alexander · Friday, July 18, 2003

On the ground in Iraq, the new Governing Council, enlisting 25 prominent Iraqis as interim leaders, was activated over the weekend. The council seeks early UN recognition as an indicator of legitimacy. Among the first business of the council was to ban Saddam's Ba'athist holidays (such as Thursday's 35th anniversary of their revolution) and to declare April 9th, the day Saddam's statue fell in Baghdad, a national holiday. Time will tell whether the name fits, but doesn't "Iraqi Independence Day" have a fine ring to it?

Though most of Iraq is now pacified, hostilities continue to cost about one precious American life each day. "It's low intensity conflict, in our doctrinal terms, but it's war, however you describe it," says Gen. John P. Abizaid, new commander of American forces in Iraq. To contend with those hostilities, the President may call up two National Guard brigades -- about 10,000 soldiers -- to supplement or replace active-duty and reserve military personnel now in Iraq. The call-up would not be necessary but that some former allies like France refuse to send troops to Iraq for peacekeeping. (Bastille Day was Monday, and we hope you celebrated with American wine!)

There has been talk in Washington of turning the mission in Iraq over to the UN. Bad idea! The UN has never understood liberty or independence or "consent of the governed."

In addition to carrying out "hunt-and-kill" operations against Ba'athist remnants and Jihadis, U.S. forces have discovered reams of documents. Former UN weapons inspector David Kay assessed that the "smoking gun" is already in U.S. custody: "I've already seen enough to convince me, but that's not the standard. I've got to have enough to convince everyone of that." Some other uncovered documents from Saddam's secret-police organization, the Mukhabarat, discuss the expected victory of coalition forces in taking Iraq, while laying out subsequent plans for reconstituting a guerrilla-style campaign from remnants of Ba'athist loyalists and their Jihadi allies.

And speaking of interesting documents, U.S. Appellate Court Judge Gilbert Merritt, one of 13 judiciary experts selected by the Justice Department to help Iraq build a judicial system, wrote in a report recently: "Through an unusual set of circumstances, I have been given documentary evidence of the names and positions of the 600 people in Iraq closest to Saddam Hussein, as well as his ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden. ... The list contained not only the names of the 55 'deck of cards' players who have already been revealed, but also 550 others. The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is 'responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.' The document shows that it was written over the signature of Uday Saddam Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein."

Judge Merritt obtained the document from a published source, the Babylon Daily Political Newspaper, published by Saddam's son Uday Hussein. In the November 14, 2002, edition, Uday published a "List of Honor," which included Saddam's family and trusted administration officials. Halfway down the page is a notation translated: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan." Within hours of the paper's distribution, Iraqi intelligence officials confiscated it from every newsstand and known buyer. The CIA is now reviewing the list for its authenticity.

In other news...

The Leftmedia airwaves and newsprint were replete this week with increasingly dramatic claims about that 16-word "lie" President George Bush uttered in his January State of the Union address to "justify" the Gulf War, Part 2. By now you have committed them to memory: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (By extension, we suppose, the American Left is tagging British Labour Party PM Tony Blair a liar.) While it now appears some of the documents on which Britain's MI-5 intelligence made its assessment were forgeries, Tony Blair says there is much additional classified evidence for the claim.

Asked repeatedly this week about his statement, President Bush said plainly, "The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. ... As long as I hold this office I will never risk the lives of American citizens by assuming the good will of dangerous enemies [with] such weapons."

Whether from Niger or elsewhere, anyone who doubts that Saddam was seeking uranium for his nuclear WMD programs is either an idiot or a Democrat presidential contender -- a redundancy, we know. But matching wits with idiots is bad political strategy. In his last press briefing Monday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer used 6,797 words to defend the original 16 words uttered by his boss in his 5,494 word SOTU. The Bush administration should NEVER have allowed this comment to become an issue. Our advice to Mr. Bush, et al., "Don't swap spit with Jacque-asses!"

Quote of the week...

"I know it's hard on America. And in some small corner of this vast country ... there's a guy getting on with his life perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, 'Why me, and why us, and why America?' And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do." --Prime Minister Tony Blair addressing a joint session of Congress Thursday.

News from the Swamp...

In the Executive Branch, the President departed from his conservative base by promising to sign Medicare "reform" legislation designed to provide prescription drugs to all seniors. Administration "pragmatists" know that almost 70% of voters 65 and over showed up at the polls in 2000, but this is some very expensive pandering, both economically and politically. In reality, there is no crisis over the increased cost of medications. Indeed, only 5% of Medicare recipients in the most recent year of record had out-of-pocket prescription costs exceeding $2,000, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and most retirees are privately insured.

Furthermore, even if there WERE such a crisis, the Constitution unambiguously prohibits the federal government from addressing such issues, reserving them instead for the state and local governments. The President's commitment to sign the Medicare legislation, like his promise to renew the 1994 Clinton-Feinstein-Schumer gun-control law scheduled to sunset in September of 2004, is pragmatic hogwash that flies in the face of both the Constitution and his conservative base.

In the House, Rep. Ron Paul's amendment to withdraw the U.S. from the UN was defeated this week by a vote of 350-74. You may recall that The Federalist's public opinion service, PatriotPetitions.US, sponsored a petition in support of this amendment, entreating President George Bush, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist "...to terminate all participation by the United States in the United Nations, terminate any and all U.S. taxpayer-funded support for the UN, and prohibit American Armed Forces from serving under the command of the United Nations anywhere in the world." While we did not expect Rep. Paul's amendment to pass, the fact that 73 members of the House joined Rep. Paul in support of this amendment and that some 40,000 of our readers registered their support for it, certainly serves to keep the heat on UN oversight. (Footnote: Atop the UN's current wish list is a $1 billion interest-free loan from U.S. taxpayers for renovations on the UN headquarters building in New York.)

Undeterred, Rep. Paul proposed H.J. Resolution 15, "an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens." We are on board with this one!

In other sovereignty-relevant actions, the House voted 226-198 to regulate "matricula consular" identification cards as a national security risk. Demos, predictably, promptly denounced the national protection measure as "anti-Hispanic."

In the Senate, there is a bill pending to protect food manufacturers and sellers from the Kleptocracy, trial lawyers who are now hawking "obesity-liability" lawsuits. Sen. Mitch McConnell introduced the legislation prohibiting lawsuits by folks claiming food companies and restaurants made them obese. "This bill does not outlaw any of the traditional litigation nor does it immunize the food industry," Mr. McConnell said. "But what it does do is nip in the bud this absurd new predatory practice [of suing food producers in class-action lawsuits]." You know, it's modeled after the now-infamous tobacco litigation, which did no good but made some Clintonista trial lawyers very rich.

Speaking of food, Demo presidential candidate Sen. John "Ketchup" Kerry, who made his millions the old-fashioned way (by marrying the Heinz fortune heiress), has missed 47% of Senate votes this year, while Sen. Joe LIEberman has only missed 34%.