KIM JUNG IL

First they claimed Saddam Hussein was insane?  And in the last year or so they were clamoring about how mad Ahmadinejad of Iran is, what with all of his Holocaust-denial crap (sounds like the “birther” movement, eh?).

But Kim Jung IL of North Korea is in a category all his own – this guy is simply crazier than a rat in a tin shithouse.

Weapons of Mass Destruction?  Check.

Threat to U.S. National Security and World Peace?  Check.

State sponsor of terrorism?  Check.

Has all the trappings of another “Operation Iraqi Freedom” – you know, “Mission Accomplished“? 

So where are those “drum beats for war“, and WTF is Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Fox News, and the rest of those sabre-rattling Neo-Cons doing sitting on their hands?  They were wrong on Iraq.  They keep talking about Iran.  But in this case – we can call it “Operation N. Korea Freedom” – they even have a damn good chance at being right for a change!  Or are they too scared to let Obama wag the dog ?

We’re waiting . . . . . . . . . . ?

Man, this silence is deafening.

Sheehan is the poster-girl for the U.S. anti-war movement that sprouted after the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.  Her son Casey was killed-in-action in Iraq in 2004, and within a year she became the leading figure in the Iraq War protests when she appeared on national television in the summer of 2005 near Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas when he was there on summer vacation.

While leading a protest in Washington, D.C. last weekend, Sheehan pointed a bullhorn at the Whitehouse and yelled, “Arrest that war criminal“, obviously calling for President Obama’s prosecution for war crimes because he has not yet ordered the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq.  At that moment, Sheehan lost any credibility she may have garnered these past six years.

I opposed the war in Iraq from the day the Bush Administration launched it’s public relations offensive in support of that strategic disaster.  Afghanistan was and always will be the right war.  That is where the principle threat from terrorism exists, and no amount of debate will ever change that one simple fact.  

Nor will the argument that Saddam Hussein was ever any strategic or regional threat to our national security.  There were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  There was never any significant military capability in Iraq.  Even our intelligence agencies knew that.  After Desert Storm I in 1990, Saddam was reduced to the status of just another tin-horn dictator.   Kim Jung Il of North Korea has always been a far greater threat to our nation with his long-range missiles and nuclear weapons.  So why didn’t we attack him first?

Because Saddam did possess the one ”threat” to our national security that was of any real value  - a big damn oil spigot.  Dick Cheney wanted his hand on that faucet, so he set out to convince everyone around him that Hussein was the most dangerous man in the world – when the real danger to global security was right there in Cheney’s mirror.  I believe Cheney and his minions are war criminals.  There is no hiding my disdain for this man, and I believe he is one of the most evil persons of the 21st Century – Osama bin Laden, notwithstanding.

However, no amount of projection of Sheehan’s anger towards President Obama, simply because she disagrees with  his decision to alter the time-table for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, will somehow magically transform him into a war criminal anymore than painting a thin mustache on his likeness will make him Hitler – as his Teabagger foes are prone to doing.

President Obama – like myself – believes we need to leave Iraq.  President Obama – like myself – never supported the War in Iraq.  President Obama – like myself – understands that undoing the failed war strategies of the previous Administration cannot be accomplished overnight. 

Cindy Sheehan – when you metaphorically painted that little black mustache on President Obama’s upper lip last Saturday, you shot yourself in the foot.  You are a disgrace to America.

Surrender your bullhorn, and go home.

SENATOR RICHARD SHELBY HOLDING HANDS WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN [circa 1990] 

Dear Senator Shelby:

As noted in this author’s previous post, you were playing politics with the lives of young American soldiers in order to get your way over the issue of awarding Northrop Grumman a contract to build a refueling tanker plane in your home state of Allah Bama.

Now Northrop Grumman has withdrawn it’s bid to build the planes, and will not file a formal protest because, in the words of Northrop’s chief executive, Wesley G. Bush, “service men and women have been forced to wait too long for new tankers.”

Senator Shelby:  Service men and women have also been forced to wait too long for Senate confirmation of Obama’s appointee who is designated to become top Department of Defense point-man for readiness and managing deployments to Afghanistan, all because of you. 

They are still waiting . . .

P.S.  The picture in the caption was taken in 1990 during a Congressional junket to Iraq by Senator Shelby and Senator Arlen Spector.  The authenticity of this trip can be confirmed right here on Senator Spector’s website.