Many Americans wonder why so much has been said about John Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activities that took place over thirty years ago, doubting that it is relevant to the issues of today. On the contrary, it is very relevant.  His claims of widespread war crimes and atrocities committed by American troops in Vietnam clearly demonstrate a profound character flaw that makes the Massachusetts Senator unfit to be the President of the United States. Americans must be made to realize this. There is no better way to illustrate this point than to show beyond a doubt that his twisting and bending of the truth to serve strictly political purposes did not cease when he resigned from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He is still distorting reality in the same manner as he did then, impeding the War on Terror, and providing aid and comfort to the enemy. Along with his allies in the news media, he is knowingly and purposely distorting history by spinning preliminary statements that came out of the 9/11 Commission last week regarding its findings on the issue of links between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorists.  In doing so, he accused the Bush Administration of doing the very thing that he himself has been doing for over thirty years of public life. 

In its preliminary report, the Commission stated that it found “no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."  This is consistent with statements emanating from the Bush Administration as far back as September 2003.  Not once had the Administration even hinted that Saddam Hussein had participated in the planning for 9/11 nor any other attack carried out by al Qaeda against the United States. "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the Commission’s report said.  Again, this is consistent with the Administration’s statements that Iraq had no known role in planning the attacks of 9/11.  Meeting with reporters in mid-September 2003, the President said, "No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th…".   When questioned about a statement made by Vice President Cheney a few days earlier on “Meet the Press”, Bush said. "What the vice president said was is that he (Saddam) has been involved with al-Qaida….And al-Zarqawi, an al-Qaida operative, was in Baghdad. He's the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S. diplomat. ... There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties."

Commission members themselves acknowledged that there were ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.  Commission Chairman Tom Kean stated “Were there contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq? Yes… Some of them were shadowy but they were there." Commission member John Lehman, responding to FOX News about what some had perceived to be a discrepancy between the Commission’s findings and prior Bush Administration statements, said, "There's an attempt by some ... to manufacture a controversy where there is none," and he went on to refer to the controversy as an "issue of semantics”.

Recent polls indicate that many Americans believe that the Administration had attempted to link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks to justify going to war in Iraq. This finding is dubious at best inasmuch as it calls on respondents to accurately recall events that occurred well over a year ago in an era when we are being constantly bombarded by the media on rapidly evolving issues and events. Had these same respondents been asked in late 2002 or early 2003, when the news was fresh, whether the Bush Administration was claiming that Iraq had played a role in the 9/11 attacks, the results undoubtedly would have been different, since the claim was never made. Playing on this current public misconception, Kerry said last week in Detroit that, "the administration misled America…. They did not tell the truth to Americans about what was happening or their own intentions."  Kerry himself either has a very short or a very selective memory regarding the events leading up to the War in Iraq, or he is intentionally reverting to the brazenly deceptive tactics that he used in the early 1970’s during his anti-war years.

Last week’s revelations by Russian President Vladimir Putin of Iraqi plans to attack American interests at home and abroad, and the passing of that information to American intelligence, further strengthens the Administration’s arguments that Iraq posed a threat to the United States. One of the most commonly heard objections to this perceived threat was that Saddam Hussein had no bombers or missiles that could deliver weapons of mass destruction to America. The myopia that was displayed by these objections clearly illustrates the limited thinking and understanding of the situation on the part of the anti-war crowd, a trait that has been carried forward to this day. It is unfortunate that the al Qaeda terrorists did not have this same shortsightedness and limited ingenuity when they were devising a plan of attack against the United States before September 11, 2001. Putin’s revelations also beg the question as to the weapons that Saddam would have used in those attacks. Would he have used hijacked aircraft in suicide attacks, as did al Qaeda? Not likely. The motis operandi of the Iraqi military does not rely on suicide missions, although this could not be ruled out. A somewhat more likely scenario would utilize conventional explosives, strategically placed by Iraqi special forces to bring down buildings, power lines, and other major structures. Such attacks would achieve only limited objectives, however, and would not warrant the risk of massive American retaliation against Iraq that would likely follow. The most likely type of attack would have involved the use of chemical and/or biological weapons that would kill or incapacitate tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Americans, a devastating blow with the potential of wreaking havoc in this country. It would have been relatively easy to smuggle small containers of these weapons into this country and transport them to their target areas. This assumes, of course, that Saddam Hussein either had stockpiles of these weapons on hand or had the capability to produce sufficient quantities in relatively short time frames.

Although we have not yet found the stockpiles and perhaps never will, we do have absolute, unquestionable proof that Saddam had the capability to produce these weapons. Given that even a “shadowy” link rather than a “collaborative” link existed between Saddam and al Qaeda, the President made the courageous decision to reduce the possibility that such weapons would ever fall into the hands of terrorists to be used against America. 

Those who are now claiming that the 9/11 Commission reported that there was no link of any kind between Saddam and al Qaeda, and that therefore President Bush misled America during the runup to the War in Iraq, are themselves engaging in blatant demagoguery and deception for strictly political purposes. In the case of John Kerry, it is a manifestation of the same character defect that had him accusing his former comrades-in-arms with routine atrocities and war crimes during the Vietnam War. It is a defect that makes true in his mind any claim or statement, regardless of its twisting of facts and misrepresentation of reality, as long as it promotes the political interest of John Kerry.

For more on this subject, see Morning Reads: Correcting the Record

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