konane's Blog

Our worst bad day ever can't compare to some of these photos.     

http://www.airmunn.com/oops.htm

 

The consequence of the AP’s coverage of the War on Terror: they have allowed themselves to become a pawn of our enemy. The terrorists are as cunning as they are evil, and they have incorporated media coverage as part of their strategy to win the war. Intuitively, the AP and the rest of the mainstream media understand that the promise or hope for press coverage influences behavior. After all, every year the public relations industry spends billions of dollars hoping to position their clients’ message in the media.

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/ToddManzi/2005/12/08/178110.html

 

The joke UN not capable of acknowledging its own corruption, taking bribes, engaging in sexual harrassment, never ever dealing with terrorism effectively, never doing anything but pounding its chest  .............. is hair on fire determined to rule the world one scheme at a time.                     

 

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Maurice Strong, for example -- long an influential executive officer at the U.N. and the head of the 1992 Earth Summit -- once said: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" In his book Earth in the Balance, Al Gore (who could easily be the US president right now) advocated "bold efforts to change the very foundation of civilization."
What motivates these people? Have they tried poverty and decided that poverty is better than wealth? I doubt it. The poor of the world aspire to gain what we have. Many will risk their lives (some will lose their lives) to enter the United States to be able to enjoy what we frequently take for granted.
The single most important underlying theme that unites these critics of affluence is a misunderstanding of basic economics. I'm not talking about the intricacies of economic theories and their associated technical buzzwords. I'm talking about concepts that are so basic to the health and happiness of a society that they should be taught in every high school -- perhaps before. Yet, most college graduates do not understand even the basics of economics.
While one of the most famous definitions of economics is "the study of the use of scarce resources that have alternative uses," I would like to advance a more fundamental definition. The practice of economics is simply "people doing useful things for each other." Anything that makes that process more efficient will contribute to the creation of wealth, which leads to health, longevity, and a more comfortable existence for any given individual. Central to this process is the fact that a person, not the government, is ultimately the most qualified to determine what is 'useful.' The aggregate effect is people in society finding the processes are the most efficient and beneficial without knowing it.
Here's my list of some basic economic principles that must be understood in order keep us from falling prey to popular misconceptions that, when acted upon, hurt the economy -- and thus the processes by which people achieve health and well-being. While these are not new, I have restated them in ways that might be more meaningful to non-economists.

1. Wealth is created; it is not static. Russia has immense natural resources, but remains a very poor country. Japan has very few natural resources, yet has one of the world's strongest economies. Why is this? Because what people do with the natural resources, not how many natural resources their country has, is what is important. If a society constantly strives to produce what its people want, maximizing efficiency in the process, then that society will develop a rising standard of living. A society that doesn't, won't.
   

1. Hard work does not necessarily create wealth. If half of us spent our time digging holes in the ground, and the other half fill the holes up again, we would be doing a lot of work, but we would have a very low standard of living. In a free market, people are paid wages based upon the value of their services and knowledge to other people, balanced against the supply of other people who make the same skills available to the labor pool.
   

1. Free markets improve the standard of living. When individuals determine what is of value, through purchases of goods and services whose prices depend upon supply and demand, their standard of living will be improved. The interplay of supply and demand is an impressively self-regulating process. While well-intentioned governmental planners have attempted to do a better job than the market, they have been unable. No subgroup of people can be more knowledgeable about what society wants than the people who make up that society (i.e. those involved in each and every transaction.)
   

1. Profits positively motivate free markets. Profits are good for the economy as a whole. On average, transactions in a free market result in about 10% profit and 90% recovery of the costs of doing business. The hope of sharing in that profit, though relatively small on a percentage basis, is part of what motivates people (and companies) to increase efficiency and develop new products or services that the public desires. If someone becomes immensely wealthy, it is because the public has "voted" through their purchases. That means, the products that the wealthy person produces are more valuable to his customers than alternative products or services they could have purchased elsewhere.
   

1. Higher prices can spur competition and prevent shortages. No one likes high prices, yet they play a crucial role in a market. When prices rise -- whether due to shortages, the increased cost of raw materials, or increased demand -- free market mechanisms will act in such a way as to reduce those prices. Demand will subsequently go down. New types of materials will be found to replace those that have become too expensive. More efficient production capabilities will be developed. High prices also attract greater investment, which helps to facilitate these changes. If you prefer, call high prices a necessary evil. But they are indeed necessary for the system to work. Government price controls (to prevent prices from going too high) or price supports (to prevent prices from going too low) ultimately hurt the economy. That's because prices have important information in them.
   

1. Governmental interference in the economy is almost always harmful. Other than preventing either the formation of a monopoly (which is extremely rare) or collusion to fix prices among companies in a particular sector (which is like a monopoly), the best role for government is to simply stay out of the way. Interference with an economy's price mechanism limits the benefits to be obtained from flourishing free markets.
   

Yet to this last point, governmental interference is central to the UN's conference on climate change (COP-11) in Montreal this week. In order to reduce mankind's production of greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide), the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (commonly called the Kyoto Protocol) was devised by many of the world's bureaucrats to keep you from producing so much carbon dioxide. And despite the health and well being these people have personally achieved from access to affordable energy, most of them will likely lobby for prosperity-dampening restrictions on energy use.
A presentation by experts in philosophy and ethics at COP-11 this week, sponsored by the Tides Foundation and Penn State's Rock Ethics Institute, made it clear that it is, in their view, unethical for the industrialized countries of the world to threaten the health and well being of poor countries by releasing so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Even if the threat has only a low probability of being realized, they argue, the only ethical course of action is to stop this "risky" activity. But just as command-and-control approaches by governments have historically hurt humanity, we can see that once again governments are ignoring the negative unintended consequences of the proposed "solutions" to the problem.
Access to affordable energy has benefited most of humanity in one way or another. Therefore, the very real dangers of restricting energy use have to be weighed against the potential dangers associated with climate change. An admittedly extreme, but simple, example would be our dependence on food. Even though you risk choking to death when you eat, do you stop eating? Of course not. Yet the majority of the COP-11 participants continue to march humanity toward solutions to a potential environmental problem without realizing that they could, at the same time, be shooting everyone in the collective foot.
It is imperative that people understand what is necessary for the well being of humanity as a whole: political, personal, and economic freedom to do as one chooses. Just as technology has solved past problems as they have arisen, so economic growth will lead to new energy technologies that reduce the risk of global warming. But these solutions will only come about when people are left free to generate the wealth that will be required to invest in the development of these new technologies.

And economic growth, facilitated by the global spread of freedom, is now blossoming in historically destitute countries such as India and China. Somewhere in a poor village in Africa, China, or India may well be a child who will grow up to spearhead the development of a new energy technology that will eventually remove global warming as a threat. As the economist Thomas Sowell put it, our most valuable and scarcest natural resource is human knowledge. If the anti-growth folks at COP-11 have their way, this natural resource will be greatly restricted. The global warming problem (to the extent there really is one) will only become graver.  "

 

http://www.techcentralstation.com/120705D.html 

And another excellent one by Mr. Dyson!!  Enjoy .... but guaranteed you won't if you like any of these traitors.

Bullseye again!!   

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"If It Happened Today"
http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/fresh/showpics.cgi?if_it_happened_today

Click the picture for Mr. Dyson's sage commentary.  He always nails it ... this one is a bullseye!!

 

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"Got Your Back"
http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/fresh/showpics.cgi?got_your_back

 

On a more interesting note here at home, seems we may have a real problem within the CIA.  I've considered it sufficiently important that I've contacted my senators asking for a congressional investigation .... and will do so again as many times as it takes to get it done. 

When a nation has its president's own intelligence gathering agency attempting to undermine if not overthrow that seated president you have a real problem that needs to be addressed immediately.  A house cleaning needs to take place and if rogues are discovered they need to be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Please contact your senators and representatives if you feel this is sufficiently serious. 

I do or wouldn't have used as much blog space to post articles about it.

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Wonder when folks worldwide are going to figure out that socialism (Marxism by any other name) creates a slave state hierarchy of worker ants which which support those who would crown themselves as queen(s)??????? 

We've witnessed communism (radical Marxism) fail time and time again over the past hundred years while capitalism has thrived. 

However, the (Clinton-Kerry-Kennedy-Pelosi +++) left wants to push us farther and farther away from capitalism and model us after Euro socialists we're currently watching dive head first into the bottomless abyss they've created through Marxism. 

France and Germany economies and standards of living are going to   in a hand basket and they would have us follow such a fine example.  Our own left refuses to learn from the glaring obvious.   

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Last week, the partners of Germany's new "Grand Coalition", the CDU/CSU and SPD, signed off on their governing agreement. Now it's official: instead of long overdue reform to jumpstart the economy and restore consumer confidence, Germans will get more of the same rigid policies that have failed the country over at least the last three decades.

 

 

In the weeks leading up to the special election on September 18, many political commentators and foreign investors had hoped for a dramatic change for the better in Germany's public policy. These hopes were shattered as election results came in. Due to the disappointing performance of the CDU/CSU at the polls, a reform-minded government coalition between CDU/CSU and free-market FDP became impossible. Free Democrats and Christian Democrats were ready to roll up their sleeves and tackle the country's tremendous challenges in full awareness of the political realities: reform would be painful, but unavoidable if the country wanted to return to the path of prosperity.

 

 

The morning after was sobering. The election had produced no clear winner, leading to bitter exchanges not only about who would assume the chancellorship, but also about the direction of the country. So it comes as no surprise that the coalition agreement presented last week is merely the latest manifestation of the country's lack of direction. The result can be summarized in two words: "ignore" and "postpone".

 

 

 

The political agenda is dictated by the availability of federal funds. What would have been needed, a clear leitmotif in economic policy, is blatantly lacking. Moreover, the coalition agreement failed to produce a coherent and stringent concept for political modernization because core elements of Germany's economic malaise, the health care crisis and labor market reform to name just two, had been exempt from the coalition negotiations altogether.

 

 

Most worrisome about the coalition agreement is the fact that it ignores the most basic rule in economics 101: tax cuts, not tax increases, spur economic growth and investment. Instead, the agreement presents taxpayers with the biggest tax hikes in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.

 

 

Before September 18, the CDU/CSU and FDP had presented a joint vision to move the country forward: elimination of subsidies, shrinking Germany's overwhelming bureaucratic apparatus, as well as simplifying the tax code and reducing taxes across the board. Two months later the CDU/CSU is humming a very different tune.

 

 

Tax relief and the rollback of overwhelming government intervention are no longer at the center of the coalition's grandiose vision to heal the "sick man of Europe". Quite the contrary: the increase of Germany's value added tax from 16 to 19 percent is presented as an economic silver bullet to revive domestic consumption.

 

 

CDU/CSU and SPD believe that with the VAT increase starting in 2007, Germans will go on an all out spending spree in 2006 to avoid the higher tax rate a year later. This shortsightedness is breathtaking. Even if domestic consumption were to rise in 2006, potential gains would by far be outweighed by a higher private savings rate starting in 2007 to pay for all the other government-expanding schemes and tax hikes the coalition has in store. In essence, the VAT hike will drain €72 billion over three years from Germany's economy without anything positive to show for it.

 

 

Adding insult to injury, the coalition agreement is tellingly silent on changing the country's socialist welfare programs. All of these programs, while already in the red, rely on future taxpayers to "secure" their existence. In their coalition agreement, CDU/CSU and SPD have once more dodged reality. Structural changes - complete or at least partial privatization - in the country's exorbitant welfare programs have been postponed until the end of time. The only "reform" the coalition could agree on is to raise monthly withholdings for Social Security from 19.5 to 19.9 of pre-tax income. In the contentious realm of health care policy, the parties agreed to postpone talks on the issue until late 2006.

 

 

Blatantly ignoring the advice of German economists and tax experts, Germany's emerging government is set on implementing disincentive after disincentive: On top of raising the VAT, it is also adding a special "wealth". Also, Germany's corporate tax system is in dire need of reform, yet the coalition once again opted for postponement. No debate on the issue is scheduled before 2008.

 

 

Overall, the coalition agreement looks like a victory for Social Democrat policies. The Christian Democrats have clearly sacrificed much-needed reform on the altar of political power for the sake of claiming the chancellorship. The bill will be footed by the German taxpayer.

 

 

Friedrich Merz, the former CDU/CSU parliamentary leader, said after the coalition agreement was published: "A tax-cutting party has been converted into a tax raising party." He hit the nail on the head, not only in the area of the emerging tax policies of this government, but also in assessing the coalition agreement in its entirety: More taxes, more bureaucracy and more redistribution.

 

 

During the campaign, the CDU floated the flat tax model as a viable solution to the country's ills. Instead, CDU/CSU and SPD will increase the existing tax burden and invent new taxes, increase subsidies for eco-energy fivefold, continue to subsidize coal until at least 2008 and prohibit dumping prices on groceries. The worst anti-market move to come from the agreement is a freezing of prescription drug prices for at least two years, until 2007.

 

 

The new government will expand government intervention and continue robbing Peter to pay Paul -- once more ignoring the fact that it was exactly this kind of redistribution that created the German malaise. German taxpayers better hold on to their wallets and brace themselves for a continuation of downturn: courtesy of the "not-so-grand-coalition" the anti-growth and anti-wealth policies are here to stay.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/112305C.html

 

 

"There have been rumblings of late about the developing alliance between Islamic radicals and neo-Nazis. In late May, Israeli president Moshe Katzav gave a speech before the German parliament in which he warned, "Let's not be surprised if terror organizations use neo-Nazis for carrying out terror attacks." And on August 5, WorldNetDaily reported, "Neo-Nazi skinheads are working with radical Islamists in a growing unholy alliance that has European law enforcement officials concerned about a new front in the war on terrorism."

Such an alliance seems unlikely on its face; after all, neo-Nazis view most Muslims as racially inferior, while Islamic extremists believe that neo-Nazis are just another flavor of infidel. However, a closer examination reveals that many white-supremacist groups have expressed solidarity with Islamic terrorists recently, and in turn some white supremacists and far-right Holocaust deniers have found newfound supporters among the Islamists.

The most prominent recent example of white supremacists' vocal support for Islamic terrorism came from August Kreis, the new head of Aryan Nations. In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Kreis said of al Qaeda, "You say they're terrorists, I say they're freedom fighters. And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples' heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah." Going a step further, Kreis told CNN that he had a message for Osama bin Laden: "The message is, the cells are out here and they are already in place. They might not be cells of Islamic people, but they are here and they are ready to fight."

The Aryan Nations website reflects Kreis's desire to instill a "jihadic feeling" in his followers. For example, it features an article purporting to show that the idea of jihad can be found not only in Islam but also in the Bible. The article concludes with a battle cry: "All the sons of Abraham, all descendants of his three wives, Sarah, Hagar and Ketourah, the parties of the Islamic and Aryan World, all need to understand their duty to enact Holy Jihad, we need to live this Jihad; total war, death to our enemy, the insidious, poisonous and rabid satanic jEw." [sic]

Aryan Nations also boasts a quote on its main page further reflecting its support for radical Muslims. Attributed to Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, the quote states that "a link is created between Islam and National-Socialism on an open, honest basis. It will be directed in terms of blood and race from the North, and in the ideological-spiritual sphere from the East." The main page also touches on other issues of importance to Muslim radicals. It demands immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East, and under the headline "Ariel Sharon: your typical domineering jew," the website features a picture of the Israeli prime minister with fire coming out of his mouth that ends in a mushroom cloud. Underneath, the website proclaims the photograph to be Sharon's "plan for Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc . . . "

Beyond the Aryan Nations, a surprising number of other white-supremacist websites openly sympathize with Islamic terrorists. The National Alliance, the country's largest neo-Nazi organization, published a 2002 essay by its founder, the late William Pierce, which claimed that the September 11 attacks were a salutary event. Pierce wrote that through the attacks, bin Laden "forced the whole subject of U.S. policy in the Middle East into the open: the subject of American interests versus Jewish interests, of Jewish media control and its influence on governmental policy." Because bin Laden broke the "taboo" about questioning Jewish interests, Pierce claimed, "n the long run that may more than compensate for the 3,000 American lives that were lost."

Neo-Nazi James Wickstrom has a webpage that includes a number of featured articles, the headlines of which provide a good indication of where he stands on the Islamist question. These include "Military Personnel Wounded in Iraq & Afghanistan For The JEW Neo-cons," "U.S. Slaughters People At Prayer At Baghdad Mosque," "U.S. Teachers Targeted By jews If They Teach Contrary to Israeli," and "The President and his jewish handlers LIED about 9/11!"

And the neo-Nazi ADLUSA website (a site designed to oppose the Anti-Defamation League) brands the Anti-Defamation League's call for Hezbollah TV to be designated a foreign terrorist organization as part of a campaign "of smear, corruption, and harassment," and promotes the conspiracy theory that Jewish hands were behind the 7/7 and 9/11 terrorist attacks. In case this doesn't make their position perfectly clear, the ADLUSA features a direct appeal to Muslims: "Moslems, lay down your guns and join our mission to remove Jews from positions of power from which they persecute one people after another; killing Americans misled by Jews only incites endless wars."

This vocal neo-Nazi support for al Qaeda reaches back to shortly after 9/11. The Jewish newspaper Forward reported in November 2001 that the World Church of the Creator displayed a bin Laden quote on its website warning Americans that they needed to tend to their own interests and not those of the Jews.

Around the same time, the website for Florida-based Aryan Action displayed the message: "Support Taliban, Smash ZOG." (ZOG stands for Zionist Occupation Government, a term rooted in the idea that the Jews control world affairs.) In a perverse twist on President Bush's declaration that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," Aryan Action's website voiced its unequivocal support for al Qaeda: "Either you're fighting with the jews against al Qaeda, or you support al Qaeda fighting against the jews."

Thus far, there has been no proof of neo-Nazi cooperation with Muslim terrorist groups in planning attacks. Despite the lack of proof of operational links, several figures with feet in both movements have actively tried to bring them closer. One such individual is Ahmed Huber, a 77-year-old Swiss convert to Islam whose study is adorned with twin pictures of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.

Huber told the Washington Post that his goal is to build bridges between radical Muslims and the "New Right." He said that a prevalent view on the New Right is that "what happened on the 11th of September, if it is the Muslims who did it, it is not an act of terrorism but an act of counterterrorism." Certain far-right figures, such as German National Democratic Party theorist Horst Mahler, seem amenable to Huber's ideas. Mahler has spoken of the "sense of sympathy" and "common ground" that far-right European groups share with Islamists, and has admitted to "contacts with political groups, in particular in the Arab world, also with Palestinians."

The neo-Nazis' newfound love for Islamists is by no means unrequited. Some radical Islamic groups have--perhaps in an effort to undercut one of the justifications for the state of Israel--forged intellectual ties with right-wing Holocaust deniers.

At the forefront of contemporary Holocaust denial is the California-based Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which is dedicated to the idea that the Holocaust is a historical fiction. The IHR has been so heartened by the support it's received in the Islamic world that investigative journalist Martin A. Lee noted its journal's frenetic description of a "white-hot trend: the rapid growth of Holocaust revisionism, fueled by increasing cooperation between Muslims and Western revisionists, across the Islamic world."

A number of Middle Eastern newspapers, in countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, have published articles endorsing the Holocaust deniers' thesis. Beyond that, neo-Nazi writers who lack legitimacy in the West have increasingly found a platform in the Arab world. For example, Lee further reported that an article by David Duke was featured on the front page of the Oman Times.

Nor is the Islamic promotion of neo-Nazis confined to the Middle East. Lee reports that Muslims, a New York-based weekly newspaper, has published opinion pieces by both David Duke and William Pierce.

Even some Islamic groups with more mainstream legitimacy have promoted far-right figures as featured speakers. One such speaker is William W. Baker, author of the anti-Israel screed Theft of a Nation and former president of the neo-Nazi Populist Party. (While Baker claims that he did not know at the time that the Populist Party was racist, his own words undercut these denials. The Orange County Weekly reports that, in a speech Baker delivered around the time that he headed the Populist Party, he referred to Jerry Falwell as "Jerry Jewry" and commented that he hated traveling to New York City "'cause the first people I meet when I get off the plane are pushy, belligerent American Jews.")

Baker's current avocation is promoting "religious tolerance" by emphasizing the commonalities between Christianity and Islam. In this capacity, Baker has frequently spoken at events hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and various chapters of the Muslim Students' Association; he was also the featured speaker at the Assadiq Islamic Educational Foundation in Boca Raton earlier this year.

There are obstacles to further development of the relationship between Islamists and neo-Nazis. In Europe, ethnic Muslims are frequent targets of neo-Nazi violence, and not all neo-Nazis share the sympathy for Palestinians expressed by the likes of William Baker. As one white supremacist website puts it, "I hate Jews but that doesn't mean I automatically love the Jews' victims." And countless Muslims recoil from Nazi ideology.

Nonetheless, this developing alliance is not without historical precedent. Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, famously supported Adolf Hitler during World War II, broadcasting radio propaganda on Germany's behalf and even forming Bosnian Muslim divisions of the Waffen SS. As with al-Husayni and Hitler, the current Islamist/neo-Nazi love affair is rooted in the notion that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend": Both groups are united in their hatred of the Jews, and of the United States.

Moving forward, this peculiar alliance presents the risk that neo-Nazis may collaborate with Islamist terrorist groups on attacks. But a second danger is that the far right's newfound legitimacy in the Arab world may allow neo-Nazi figures to claw their way out from the lunatic fringe to which they're currently relegated.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a counterterrorism consultant and attorney. Kamal Ghali provided research assistance for this article. "

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19362

I believe that in most rational, logical, mature minds evidence emerging through sources ignored by the leftist lame-stream-media is demonstrating that

(1) we went into Iraq based upon evidence accumulated and agreed to during the Clinton administration up to when the current decision was made

(2) President Bush did NOT lie about that information

(3) Democrats unanimously agreed on that information but are now attempting to re-write history by repeating a lie long enough to have it replace the truth.... as all Marxist do.  Thank you internet!!!

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"No hype needed: Saddam, al-Qaida linked 

  By Victor Davis Hanson

"As American casualties mount in Iraq, politicians at home now fight over who said what and when about weapons of mass destruction and the need for going to war. One of the most frequent charges is that President Bush hyped a non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida — and that as a result, we diverted our efforts from finishing off the real terrorists to start a new and costly war to replace a secular dictator.

This charge is false for several reasons — and illogical for even more. Almost every responsible U.S. government body had long warned about Saddam's links to al-Qaida terrorists. In 1998, for example, when the Clinton Justice Department indicted bin Laden, the writ read: "In addition, al-Qaida reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al-Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaida would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."

Then in October 2002, George Tenet, the Clinton-appointed CIA director, warned the Senate in similar terms: "We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade." Seventy-seven senators apparently agreed — including a majority of Democrats — and cited just that connection a few days later as a cause to go to war against Saddam: " ... Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq."

The bipartisan consensus about this unholy alliance was not based on intriguing but unconfirmed rumors of meetings between Saddam's intelligence agents and al-Qaida operatives such as Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Nor did the senators or the president ever claim that Saddam himself planned the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead, the Justice Department, the Senate and two administrations were alarmed by terrorist groups like Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida affiliate that established bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.

More importantly, one of the masterminds of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Baghdad to find sanctuary with Saddam after the attack. And after the U.S.'s successful war against the Taliban, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the present murderous al-Qaida leader in Iraq, reportedly escaped from Afghanistan to gain a reprieve from Saddam.

All of this is understandable since Saddam had a long history of promoting and sheltering anti-Western terrorists. That's why both Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas — terrorist banes of the 1970s and 1980s — were in Baghdad prior to the U.S. invasion and why the families of West Bank suicide bombers were given $25,000 rewards by the Iraqi government.

Saddam worried little over the agendas of these diverse terrorist groups, only that they shared his own generic hatred of Western governments. This kind of support from leaders such as Saddam has proven crucial to radical, violent Islamicists' efforts.

After Sept. 11, it became clear that these enemies can only resort to terrorism to weaken American resolve and gain concessions — and can't even do that without the clandestine help of illegitimate regimes (from Saddam in Iraq to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the theocracy in Iran, Bashar Assad in Syria and others) who provide money and sanctuary while denying culpability.

Middle Eastern terrorists and tyrants feed on one another. The Saddams and Assads of the region — and to a less extent the Saudi royal family and the Mubarak dynasty — deflected popular anger over their own failures onto the United States by allowing terrorists to scapegoat the Americans.

Yet, for a quarter-century, oil, professed anti-communism and loud promises to "fight terror" earned various reprieves from the West for these dictatorships, who were deathly afraid that one day America might catch on and do something other than shoot a cruise missile at enemies while sternly lecturing "friends."

That day came after Sept. 11. To end the old pathology, we took out the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, pressured the Syrians to leave Lebanon, encouraged Lebanese democracy, hectored the Egyptians about elections, told Libya's Moammar Gaddafi to come clean about his nuclear plans, and risked oil supplies by jawboning the Persian Gulf monarchies to liberalize.

The theory behind all these messy and often caricatured efforts was not the desire for endless war — we removed by force only the two worst regimes, in Afghanistan and Iraq — but to allow Middle Easterners a third alternative between Islamic radicalism and secular dictatorship. No wonder that wherever there are elections in the Middle East — Afghanistan and Iraq — legitimate governments there have the moral authority and the desire to fight Islamic terrorism.

Americans can blame one another all we want over the cost in lives and treasure in Iraq. But the irony is that not long ago everyone from Bill Clinton to George Bush, senators, CIA directors and federal prosecutors all agreed that Saddam had offered assistance to al-Qaida, the organization that murdered 3,000 Americans. That was one of the many reasons we went into Iraq, why Zarqawi and ex-Baathists side-by-side now attack American soldiers — and why an elected Iraqi government is fighting with us.  ""

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051125/OPINION03/511250311/1110/OPINION