Great news! Saddam has finally been captured by our brave soldiers in Iraq. He was a tyrant and truly evil man. The Iraqi people are, at least for now, better off without him. Is the world a better, safer place because he is in custody? More to the point, is the United States safer from terrorism as a result of the Iraq War?

Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq ostensibly because Iraq posed an imminent threat to our national security. Principle among that threat was the suggestion that Saddam could or would pass WMD to Al Qaida for use against us here. How credible was that threat?

In Secretary Powell's address to the UN Security Council he stated, "The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented." (1) Notice the underlined portion where he stated that we "know" the Iraqis had these biological weapons. Powell went on to say that "we know" Iraq posesses 400 bombs filled with biological weapons agents along with 18 mobile bioweapons manufacturing trucks. Incidentally, Powell rhetorically asked the Security Council how long might it take for UNSCOM inspectors to find all 18 of these trucks. Implied was that if Saddam were deposed it would be vastly easier to find the alleged WMD and production facilities. Our military and intelligence have essentially had the run of Iraq for 7-8 months. Why have we not unearthed these items?

Secretary Rumsfeld also claimed certain knowledge of the whereabouts of the WMD or at least some of them. Rumsfeld said, "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."(2) Similarly, Vice President Cheney also claimed three days before the invasion of Iraq to have certain knowledge that Saddam's regime had already reconstituted it's nuclear weapons program. (3)

In discussing chemical WMD Powell asserted, "For example, Iraq has rebuilt key portions of the Tariq (ph) state establishment. Tariq (ph) includes facilities designed specifically for Iraq's chemical weapons program and employs key figures from past programs." What's interesting about that is that our unfettered forces haven't been able to confirm that assertion. In fact the evidence today strongly suggests that the UN sanctions actually succeded in halting and dismantling Iraqs WMD capabilities.(4) Secretary Powell flatly stated, "Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons." Not, "we think he has chemical weapons" or, " the Clinton Administration believed he had chemical weapons." Powell flatly stated that Saddam "has" chemical weapons. Surely such a flat assertion was backed up with solid, incontrovertible evidence. Where are these chemical WMD?

Of particular interest here is the fact that the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had warned in a classified September, 2002 report that, "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons." (5) As we now know the bulk of the Bush Administration's assertions vis a vis Iraq's nuclear WMD program were faulty due to heavily flawed, and in some cases fabricated evidence.(6)

Secretary Powell went on at length about the alleged connection between Saddam's regime and Al Quida, citing a terrorist training camp in the far northeast of Iraq run by a certain Mr. Zarqawi. Powell conceded that Saddam didn't even control that part of Iraq and that in fact that part of Iraq was under the control of our Kurdish allies. But, Powell glossed over that fact and instead asserted that Saddam's regime had an agent in the senior levels of the Ansar al-Islam organization there in Northeastern Iraq.

The international community in the form of the UN Security Council was apparently supposed to temporarily go brain dead just long enough to miss that the Kurds (our purported allies) controlled Northern Iraq. Presumably the brain failure was supposed to cease right at the point where Powell asserted that Saddam had an agent in said terrorist organization. Clearly the inference was that the existence of this alleged agent placed the entire organization under the influence of Saddam rather than under the Kurds, and that therefore this demonstrated a clear link between Saddam and Al Quida. But, do the facts not point rather more forcefully towards a Kurd/Al Quida link? It bears mentioning that without the Kurds implicit cooperation the Ansar al-Islam terrorist organization wouldn't have had any territory upon which to build a training camp. Could the fact that the Kurds didn't control a single oil well contribute to the Bush Administration's desire to link this terrorist camp with Saddam rather than with the Kurds?

Secretary Powell then detailed many acts of international terrorism by Mr. Zarqawi and Ansar al-Islam. This was an apparent attempt to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida. This was all predicated on the notion that the international community was too stupid to come up with the Kurd/Al Qaida connection that the facts actually supported.

The Bush Administration has further asserted an additional Al Qaida/Iraq connection. This link was based on alledged intelligence that placed 9/11 participant Mohammed Atta in Prague at a meeting with Iraq's Security Chief. The CIA has since determined that the evidence for such a meeting is not credible, in part because Mr. Atta was apparently in Virginia when this meeting allegedly took place. (7)

Where are we now? Over 300 US soldiers have died in Iraq while the Taliban and Al Quida have resurged in Afghanistan(8). President Bush hasn't attended a single funeral of a slain US soldier killed in Iraq (9). Bush bars the media from covering the arrival of slain soldiers at the Dover AirForce Base (9). Bush has harshly criticized the media for not reporting the good things that have been accomplished in Iraq. This begs the question: why we are in Iraq in the first place.

The link between Saddam and Al Quida is tenuous at best and completely contrived at worst. His capacity to export WMD apparently was virtually nonexistent. Why did Bush insist that we had to invade Iraq, thereby sacrificing the lives of hundreds of our brave soldiers?

By any standard of measurement Kim Chong-il, North Korea's dictator, is a greater threat to international security (10) and has ruthlessly tormented his own people in ways that Saddam apparently never even thought of.(11) Yet the Bush Administration is clearly intent on pursuing strictly diplomatic avenues with North Korea. This despite the fact that North Korea has been a thorn in our side since long before Saddam rose to power in Iraq. Could North Korea's complete lack of any petroleum reserves have anything to do with Bush's Jekyl and Hyde approach to international trouble spots?

North Korea's military capability with respect to WMD far exceeds anything Saddam ever developed or was even suspected of trying to acquire (10). Indeed, North Korea has exported medium-range missile technology to the Middle East, to Pakistan and to Iran, the third member of Bush's "Axis of Evil." North Korea has also exported short-range missile technology to other states in the region, such as Yemen, another purported ally of ours.(12) While Bush et al worried about Saddam trying to develop missiles with a range of 1,500 kilometers, North Korea has active programs to develop ICBMs with ranges of 3,500 to 15, 000 kilometers (9,321 miles!) - capable of reaching eastern Europe as well as American soil. Some of the North Korean ICBM platforms are being designed to be space-based!(10) This in addition to North Korea's existing missile capability of up to 2,896 kilometers - nearly twice as far as what Saddam had unsuccessfully attempted to create.

Ironically, in trying to justify invading Iraq President Bush stated, "Failure to act would embolden other tyrants, allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources, and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events."(13) Against the backdrop of pursuing strictly diplomatic avenues with North Korea's Kim Chong-il, that bold assertion by the President sounds more disingenuous now than it did when he uttered it.

Snake oil salesman or brave statesman? What do the facts suggest? (14) At what risk did President Bush place himself or his family members when he taunted the Iraqi insurgents to "bring em on"? At what risk did he place our soldiers?

Saddam has been captured. That is good news indeed for the Iraqi people. Bush has spent billions of US taxpayers dollars to free the Iraqi people from a run-of-the-mill tyrant.

Are we any safer?

1. Secretary of State Addresses the U.N. Security Council

2. This Week with George Stephanopolous, ABC, 3/30/03.

3. Meet the Press, NBC, 3/16/03.

4. The Kay Report
So What Happened to Iraq's WMD?

5. Excerpt on Iraqi Chemical Warfare Program, State Department, 6/7/03

6. Iraq-Niger Uranium Chronology

7. "Bush Team Stands Firm on Iraq," Washington Post, 9/15/03, p. A1.
Iraqi Agent Denies Meeting Atta

8. "We'll strike in Kabul again, say Taliban",
"Taliban Leader urges Afghan action Vs. U.S. Troops,
Taliban aims to destabilize Afghanistan,
A warning in Afghanistan.

9. Bush's Self-Serving Decision to

10. North Korea Special Weapons

11. "North Korea's Auschwitz"
MSNBC - Death, terror in N. Korea gulag
Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights

12. CNN.com - Shots fired to stop Scud ship - Dec. 10, 2002

13. Speech in Ohio, 10/07/02.

14. Deliberate distortion of intelligence.