Month: December 2002

Exercising the Second Amendment right he defends every day through his service, Marine Sergeant James Lowery shot and killed a would-be carjacker last Thursday, after being wounded himself. Sergeant Lowery is in fair condition, and will rejoin his unit, an aerial tanker squardon, upon his release from the hospital.

A lot has been said and written in the past few months regarding the fate of the Iraqi civilian population in the event of a U.S.-led attack on Saddam Hussein. Many charges have been laid at the foot of the Bush administration that the White House doesn’t care about the Iraqi people, or what they think. Many of these “journalists” have argued that the Iraqi people are fine with the current regime, and are utterly opposed to a U.S.-led invasion. Oh, really?

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group has released a white paper on the results of anonymous, on-the-street interviews conducted with Iraqi citizens in Baghdad, Mosul and Najaf. And I, quite happily, quote:

“A significant number of those Iraqis interviewed, with surprising candour, expressed their view that, if such a change required an American-led attack, they would support it.”

and

“Few Iraqis opposed an invasion for patriotic reasons or fear that an attack would lead to heavy civilian casualties.”

Granted, and understandably so:

“It should not be assumed from this that such support as might exist for a U.S. operation is unconditional. It appears to be premised on the belief both that any such military action would be quick and clean and that it would be followed by a robust international reconstruction effort. Should either of these prove untrue–if the war proved to be bloody and protracted or if Iraq lacked sufficient assistance afterwards–the support in question may well not be very long sustained.”

Now, everybody sing! “All the world over, so easy to see; people everywhere, just want to be free. . .”

ABC News has conducted an exclusive interview with two FBI agents, who said they were repeatedly warned off of the cases they were working on. Beginning in the mid-1990s, “the two Chicago-based agents were assigned to track a connection to Chicago, a suspected terrorist cell that would later lead them to a link with Osama bin Laden. Wright says that when he pressed for authorization to open a criminal investigation into the money trail, his supervisor stopped him.”

They were ordered to stop investigations into the suspected terror cell linked to al Qaeda, which would eventually perpetuate the Sept. 11 attacks. One of the individuals they were tracking was “a powerful Saudi Arabian businessman, Yassin al-Kadi. Al-Kadi is one of 12 Saudi businessmen suspected of funneling millions of dollars to al Qaeda…” After September 11th, Al-Kadi was confirmed as one of bin Laden’s financiers.

Way to go, Bill.