Impeaching Bush For WMD Misleading?

More than 30 Vermont towns the other day voted to have President Bush impeached because, besides other things, he allegedly misled the country and the world about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, according to a Reuter’s article, published Wednesday, March 7, 2007.

Apparently, this is nothing new. Vermont holds an annual, colonial-era meeting to talk about all types of issues. And it’s also nothing new that a few towns in Vermont had similar resolutions of impeaching the president last year. And let’s face it, nothing is going to happen.

One of the biggest things that many Bush critics love to throw around is that he lied to Americans about Saddam’s WMDs. But if one has really paid attention to the lead up to the war, the real question that should be asked is this: If Bush lied about a dictator’s weapons; does that mean that all of Congress, including other global governments and organizations lied as well?

What many do not know, and a good many Bush critics do not want to acknowledge, is that it just wasn’t our own government who made these claims against Saddam. We had intelligence information from European and Middle Eastern countries, as well as the United Nations, and it came down to the same thing: Saddam had WMDs.

Our Congress saw this information, and just like Bush, they came to the same conclusions as the president: Saddam had these weapons as well. In fact, many Web sites love to feature quotes from politicians who at the time said that Saddam is a threat. Now, many of them are singing a different tune.

But the fact remains that many different governments had the same information. So, did they lie as well? Not likely. Let’s take a brief trip down memory lane. In 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox because Saddam was not following the resolutions placed by him by the U.N. In fact, he was making things difficult for the weapons inspectors by not complying with them. The operation was to destroy known plants, factories and holding areas of these weapons.

When the operation was over, the U. N. asked Saddam if they could go in and see if the operation was a success. Saddam said no and they walked away with their tails between their legs. Never mind the fact that they had resolutions that allowed them to go in and check things out. And never mind the fact that no one blasts the U.N. for not enforcing its own resolutions against a man who had a huge history of lying about his weapons.

So, after 9/11, it was only natural to find out once and for all if Saddam had these weapons. Plus, there was so much intelligence information from different, global sources saying that Saddam never got rid of these weapons, that that was enough to warrant a search. And once the weapons inspectors were back in Iraq, Saddam gave them the same runaround as last time. But that’s where I have to part ways with the President’s plan.

There was nothing wrong with sending the U.N. in there and finding out what Saddam actually had. I always felt they should have had at least a year of searching before military action was even considered, much less acted on.

But let’s look at what has been found in Iraq. Granted, the huge stock piles of WMDs were not there. There were rumors before the war that there were huge shipments to Syria and according to Saddam Hussein's No. 2 Air Force officer, Georges Sada, that actually happened. Again, something to consider.

What was discovered was that Saddam lied about having terrorists training camps and a huge black market for terrorists.

So, if the good people really want to impeach Bush for misleading the world about those weapons, they better impeach the world governments as well.