Facing the Facts

Sometimes I think it's handy to step back from the rhetoric and just look at the facts.

Saddam Hussein hates us.

Now, a lot of us know that, but I don't think we appreciate the depth of that. And you need look no further than the official Iraqi press as evidence of that.

The Wall Street Journal recently decided to do just that and what do you think they found?

An Iraq "celebrating" Sept. 11t -- one magazine calling it "Allah's Revenge."

Still another, events that "revealed the true face of America."

That was blaring front-page, cover-story news in all Iraq-sanctioned stories, a country celebrating the deaths of 3,000 Americans.

Think of that. No big deal, you say? Well what do you say about this?

A November 1995 Iraq newspaper praising the emergence of a "secret Saudi opposition movement" right after the bombing of u.s. military offices in Riyadh. And then offering this tantalizing prediction of "dramatic events" to come in this country.

In July 2001, a commentary in the Iraqi publication Al-Nasiriya praising Usama bin Laden with these words:

"In this man's heart you'll find an insistence, a strange determination that he will reach one day the tunnels of the White House and will bomb it with everything that is in it."

It talks of attacks on the Pentagon, the White House, and offers this suggestion, again only two months before Sept. 11, that the U.S. will curse the memory of "Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs." Is that a reference to Sinatra's "New York, New York?"

Funny what Iraq knew and condoned and when it knew and condoned it. In cover story after cover story, its state-sponsored press praised Bin Laden.

Now ask yourself this: Exactly how did it know so much about Bin Laden?

It's a government that talks of helping the Taliban rebuild in Afghanistan. It talks of emotional help, financial help and political help.

So help me here. What is the difference between "smoking" words and a "smoking" gun?

Some people need to connect each and every dot. May I do it for you in pencil, or in blood?

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