First of all, the news media has a nasty liberal slant, so of course very few outlets are reporting the facts of this "peace t-shirt" issue. The truth is that he was accosting other shoppers, and that the mall is in fact private property, and they have a policy of asking people wearing anti-war propaganda to leave. So 1) the mall had every right to ask him to leave, and 2) it wasn’t "big brother" as many people are reporting/insinuating, but the privately-owned mall enforcing its own policies, something it is absolutely entitled to do.
So no, I’m not scared.
And I wouldn’t refer to Iraq "not exporting any oil to us" as attacking us. I’d refer to it as anti-war propaganda, since the truth is that we aren’t buying any oil from them because we are honoring sanctions against them. Technically it’s true that they aren’t exporting any oil to us, but it’s by our choice, not theirs.
And come on, you must live in a hole if you haven’t heard mention of Osama or al-Qaeda lately. It’s not in the forefront as much as Iraq, of course, but I still hear news of them at least every other day or so. But this is irrelevant, because al-Qaeda isn’t the reason we want to remove Saddam from power.
To say that Saddam’s regime does not present an imminent threat is either comical (because it’s a joke) or sad (because it’s ignorant of the facts). The threat is unquestionable. Before Saddam kicked out the inspectors in 1998, they reported on massive chemical and biological weapons stores. Saddam has clearly demonstrated his lack of regard for human life by using these weapons on thousands of his own people. Iraqi defectors report that he has mobile weapons labs designed to evade UN monkeys weapons inspectors. An Iraqi scientist recently reported that Saddam’s weapons operations are deep underground, beyond where inspectors can find them. There are reports that some of the weapons have been transported to Lebanon to avoid detection.
Between mobile labs, underground labs, and stores in other countries, Saddam can keep UN inspectors looking forever. Which is exactly what France, Russia, and the rest of the Axis of Weasel want -- because it keeps their filthy lucre flowing, because Jacques Chirac and Saddam Hussein are longtime friends, and because Iraq already owes Russia multiple billions of dollars for arms sales in the past.
We know for certain that Saddam at least was developing nuclear weapons in the past. We also know that he currently denies any existing nuclear weapons programs. And we know that he has provided no evidence that he’s destroyed/dismantled these programs or their products. Therefore one of two things must be true: either he’s destroyed them but is hiding the evidence of that from us (which is insane because it gives us a reason to attack), or he hasn’t destroyed them and he’s hiding the programs and weapons. The fact that Saddam continues to seek materials that could be used to produce nuclear weapons, combined with Saddam’s history, strongly favor the latter explanation.
We know that Saddam recently "found" banned ballistic missles and chemical warheads in his country -- the same weapons that he swore did not exist just a few months ago.
Saddam openly supports the terrorism against Jews in Isreal. And our intelligence indicates that he also supports groups such as al-Qaeda.
It is an undeniable fact that Saddam Hussen is a threat. He is a threat to the people that he kills every day in his own country. And he is a threat to the rest of the world because of the weapons he posesses, and because of his willingness to use them combined with his track record .
The only thing that is even remotely questionable about this situation is whether Saddam is an imminent threat. That, by its very nature, is a question that cannot be answered until an act of war exposes it. There are two ways to handle the situation. We can wait for him to attack us, probably suffering massive civilian casualties, before taking care of the threat. Or we can take care of the threat now, before our people are killed by it. Personally I think it rather ridiculous to wait for him to shed our blood before we take care of him. A person like Saddam, with Saddam’s history of murder, attempted genocide, brutal torture, and systematic lies, does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. And especially in the post-9/11 world, the US has a duty to protect its citizens in a more proactive way.
