GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--July 13, 2003-- At what point is a person responsible for acting against a "clear and present danger" that threatens the safety and security of the Children's Children's Children?
     The war in Iraq is one such conundrum.

      The riddle seems more complex when you look for the "yellow cake" piece of the puzzle.   Yellow cake (uranium) is the ingredient Saddam Hussein was allegedly buying from Nigeria to kickstart his building of nuclear weapons.    President Bush made a comment to that effect in his State of the Union Speech, adding muscle to the argument for invading Iraq.
       It turns out the information was false, and the Administration slipped the information into the President's speech even though its veracity was dubious.    Now, the CIA and Administration are under attack for endangering the credibility of information to serve political agendas.
       Critics of the Administration are chewing on the Yellow Cake issue with glee.
       They are attacking the moral fiber of the Iraqi War as being launched with false information, and suggesting the American public was purposefully duped, and therefore should look upon the President and his staff with jaundiced eyes--even as "evil and corrupt" power mongers who would twist and warp the truth to justify their personal goals.
        Of course, the sixteen lines in the President's State of the Union Speech about Yellow Cake were not the primary words that justified the attack on Iraq.   Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi citizens killed by two decades of despotic leadership did far more to justify the war than the potential presence of Yellow Cake, but the pundits of poison don't bring up that point.
        They are doing a root canal on what they call the "fatal flaw" of the Bush Administration--the Yellow Cake lie.

       This morning, New York Times editorial writer and Republican-hater, Maureen Dowd, attacked like a she-devil the issue by likening President Bush's administration to that of Richard Nixon.  She articulately threw about ten-dollar words like "casuistry," which means on resolves cases conscience, duty or conduct through interpretation of ethical principle or religious doctrine.   In other words, she was making Bush a god who could make up what he wanted to justify the end.
        If you study the picture the Times displays of her closely, and blow it up, you can see the Mona Lisa look in her eyes:  the "I'm-gonna-getcha-wit-words" look of the fishwife waiting for the husband in the kitchen with a butcher knife in one hand and the book of matches from Motel Hell she found in his coat pocket, laced with the spell of perfume that's not her brand.
        You don't want a Maureen Dowd hunting you down.   She spits venom like the cobra, blinding the reader with a web of words that turns any act of gallantry into a rape, pillage and plunder horror story.
        It makes me wonder what ever happened to the "clear and present danger" principle--the principle that for one to be justified to act to defend society or another, there must need only be a "clear and present danger" to the safety and security of those standing in the shadow of the Beast.
        I assume the difference lays between the word Vigilance and Complacency.
        On the one hand, you keep your hand on your sword at all times, ready to act rather than react.
        On the other, you wait until the beast has a child in his mouth and is chewing on the veal of innocence, and then, you thrash about in a sea of pontification as to the "rights of interference."
        The later seems to be the take Maureen Dowd and the United Nations offered regarding attacking Saddam Hussein's Beast of Terror machinery and dismantling his reign of Terror.

        Maureen, and others like her, are still doing their best to foul the waters of justification of the war, and, by appearances, if they could, turn the clock back and let Saddam Hussein and the world of Terrorism go about their business until they ate out the bellies of enough children that reaction rather than action was not just necessary, but a matter of survival.
         This "clear and present danger" issue is a sticky one.
         Especially for gumshoe journalistic barb throwers who like to rip and tear away the facades of power they despise.
         I personally don't think "yellow cake" was any nail in Saddam's coffin, or the turning point in American attitude toward a guy who put up a bounty of $25,000 for every suicide bomber who killed innocent people in Israel, or gassed thousands of his own people, or had his grandchildren's fathers' bodies dragged through the city of Baghdad for giving Weapons of Mass Destruction information over to the United Nations in the early 90's.
          Saddam Hussein was a clear and present danger to the idea of letting Terrorism run free in the world.
          Stopping him sent a resounding signal to all the bullies about to kick sand in the face of a Complacent world that was sitting around juggling justification to act while the Terrorists went about with virtual impunity killing people right and left.
          America, Britain, Australia and Poland stood up and acted.  Yellow cake was not the issue or motivation behind the toppling of Terrorism's rulership in Iraq.  Smashing the Terrorism of Saddam Hussein was an "Act of Vigilance" that sent a shivering chill through all the other Terrorists in the world that their thirst to drink the blood of the innocent would be met with a deeper thirst to protect the innocent.
          Vigilance does not need to eat Yellow Cake to taste the bitter venom of Terrorism.
          But, if you were to follow Maureen's logic, you would twist the moral character of not just a President but a nation's brave and courageous stand against a "clear and present danger."  You would be swept up in the sewer of muckraking a piece of "dubious data" that was jammed into a speech at the last minute and turned into a political football for people who not are as interested in the truth as they are in the lie; people who seek to find the defects in the good to destroy its value in the eyes of those they think are blind.
         I liken what Maureen suggests we see to a Terrorist holding a gun to a child's head while warning the world he'll blow the child's brains out, and despite the history of this Terrorist to blow off the heads of countless children in the past, someone yells:  "But look how well dressed he is.  He can't be a real Terrorist.  He's too well dressed."

       Maureen would divert our attention from the "clear and present danger" to the man's clothing.  She would make the threads of the clothing, not the cold, ruthless metal of the gun, our focus.
         It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out Saddam Hussein was, is, a clear and present danger to the world, or, more importantly, his clones.
        The world is full of Saddam Hussein's'.
        President Bush's recent visit to Africa was a signal to Terrorists there that the United States and other Vigilant nations are willing to act against them as we did Saddam Hussein.
        Kim Jong Il in North Korea got the message.
        I am convinced that the war in Iraq was nothing more than a action against a "clear and present danger."
        But, you read little about that in the alleged editorial seams of the New York Times, especially from the tip of Maureen Dowd's pen.
        It makes me wonder what a Sentinel of Vigilance is supposed to do when he or she reads something as Terroristic as what Maureen wrote?  Do you sit back and scoff at it?  Or, do you expose it for its injustice, in the same manner she so vaingloriously attempted to do to President Bush and the actions of America against Terrorism?

         The press is responsible for a check and balance to government, of that, there is no question.  But, there is a far greater duty of the press above simply trying to crumble Administrations it disagrees with politically.
          That duty is to present the Big Picture.  In this case, that includes the overall kudos due to the Administration for sending the world of Terrorists a giant signal that their actions will be met with deadly force.
          Then, Maureen can rail on the fact that we really didn't need a hint of Yellow Cake to make such a judgment.
          But, don't hold your breath.
          I think Maureen likes carrying around a butcher knife and emasculating those whom she considers "clear and present dangers," and, from the tone of her words, she prefers to carve on America's testicles rather than Terrorism's.
         

July 12--Iraq Body Count--Feeding Terrorism Statistically

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