Missing Explosives, and no sign of local terrorism plans for election

There is the bad news that weapons depots were overrun right after the US invasion -- this is a legitimate gripe that needs to be answered. I can't really say much about it.

This weekend CIA came out to say that there does not appear to be a terrorist plan in the states before the election.

This is probably because the terrorists have decided that an attack on US soil might tilt the election toward Bush. Their efforts are much better spent keeping violence against civillians in Iraq in the news, to erode American resolve which would translate into votes for Kerry at the polls. That and the fact that they want desperately for Iraq to fail and become a dictatorship again, theocratic or not.

This morning on Morning Edition, it was reported that UN inspectors are furious at Duelfer and his report for saying that Saddam planned on restarting his WMD programs as soon as sanctions were lifted, and for leaving out the crucial fact that the sanctions were working and that the UN had planned to oversee Saddam's weapons programs for years.

Sort of like they oversaw the oil for food program? Yeah, that was effective. Trutfully, some well placed bombs, inspections, and sanctions by the UN were, in fact, effective through about 1995, when Saddam was reduced to the point of accepting the Oil for Food offer. However, the UN gave Saddam far too much autonomous control in the program. What Duelfer reported was that Saddam quickly found a way to scam the program by selling oil well under the market rate and splitting the profits with the buyers in secret bank accounts -- to the tune of 2.6 and 2.8 billion dollars with the Russians and French, and just under 2 billion with the Chinese. Since the UN was kicked of Iraq out in the mid 90's, Saddam was in fact building missiles while continuing his huge propaganda campaign of dead babies and other social hardships which could easily have been avoided if, in fact, Saddam would have used the Oil for Food program for .... Food. He was within a year or two of having sanctions lifted.

So... the sanctions worked until Saddam took the UN up on Oil for Food and found a way to use it to negate the effect that sanctions had on his goals while he exploited the consequential suffering of his own people to get the sanctions lifted. There were no inspectors until right before the invasion of 2003. Saddam was quite successfully thumbing his nose at the UN to the point of practical subversion.

And this organization, the UN, was going to oversee Saddam's weapons programs and make sure he was on the up and up for years after the sanctions were lifted.

Pardon me for having less than 100% confidence in the UN.

This man was up to no good. He had proven himself an expert at deception, and was well on his way to having the UN let him off the hook even in the weeks leading up to the war. If Bush had let things take their course, Saddam would have gotten away with it. Bush knew that. He said enough screwin' around -- we're takin' him out with or without your support -- and it was the right thing to do.