January 27, 2004 - Well, this morning we know that Saddam Hussein had the intention to engage in weapons of mass destruction program activities. We know because that is what Whitehouse spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters on the plane to little rock. “We could not afford to rely on the good intentions of Saddam Hussein.", he told them.

This time last year we knew that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We knew what he had and we knew here he had them. We knew that because The President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, The National Security Advisor and every other administration figure who could crowd in front of a television camera told us so. We knew that because every whipstitch the Vice President would emerge from his undisclosed secure location on Sunday Morning to warn us of the looming mushroom clouds. We knew that the UN’s Hans Blix was a blind fool because he could not find the weapons that we knew were there. Donald Kay changed all that this week with his candid reports to the people. Now, only Dugout Dick knows those things but then it is hard to get up-to-date information in an undisclosed secure location.

Earlier this month we learned that the President’s first foreign policy initiative, commenced just days after Chicken George took the oath of office, was to lay the plans to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. We learned that because Paul O’Neill had the courage to break the administration’s Code of Omerta and tell us about it. Now the intention to remove Hussein was a good one.

The policy to offer support to Iraqi patriots in their efforts to overthrow the dictator was official US policy when President Bush took office. US and British planes had been flying air-cover missions for 9 years to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south. Renewing the land war was something else again. Chicken George just couldn’t wait for that process to complete itself and the good intention to remove the dictator was part of the jack-pot that he collected when he hit the trifecta on September Eleventh.

Chicken George’s good intentions sold to the nation and the world with deception and misdirection paved the road to the hell that has taken the lives of 512 Americans, 56 Britons, five Bulgarians, one Dane, 17 Italians, two Poles, eight Spaniards, two Thai and one Ukrainian, and unnumbered Iraqis as of yesterday. The road he paved has led us deep into the swamp as he promised to liberate the Iraqi people and give them the gift of Democracy. When the Iraqis took George at his word and wanted to open the brightly wrapped package he offered he had Paul Bremer say, “Not Yet”, and warn of the Shia Anaconda crawling out of the swamp.

Good things happen, even on the highway to Hell, and one of those is that Saddam and his cohorts’ intentions to engage in weapons of mass destruction activities no longer matter. But a funny thing happened along the way to liberate Iraq. We were transformed from liberators into an Army of Occupation. Our soldiers became targets and capturing Saddam did not erase the bulls-eyes painted on their backs.