RON STEPNESKI'S COMMENTARY

NEW YORK, April 1, 2003 -- The United States is justified in mounting a massive military invasion to remove sadistic dictator Saddam Hussein from his bloody 23-year reign of terror in Iraq.

He has cut out the tongues of dissidents. He and his demented offspring have brutalized Iraqi women with mass rapes and executions. He has used chemical weapons to kill thousands of his own people and others in neighboring Iran.

“We know from human rights groups that dissidents in Iraq are tortured, imprisoned and sometimes just disappear,” said President Bush in a recent radio message, according to the Associated Press. “Their hands, feet and tongues are cut off; their eyes are gouged out; and female relatives are raped in their presence.”

But the U.S. has an interest that goes beyond the humanitarian motive of freeing an oppressed people, although that would be sufficient reason for a compassionate world to act. That is self-preservation.

The U.S. became Iraq’s bitter enemy when it repulsed Hussein’s 1991 invasion of its tiny neighbor Kuwait.

Just as he cuts out dissidents’ tongues, Hussein is not a man who forgets his enemies.

The Bush Administration is convinced he has continued to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction that he would use against the U.S.

Hussein agreed to stop making such weapons and destroy the ones he had as part of a deal that ended the 1991 conflict and left him in power.

He also agreed to allow United Nations weapons inspectors make sure he kept his bargain through regular inspections. He ejected the weapons inspectors and ended the program in 1998.

1) Iraqi defector Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri said in 2001 that he had visited twenty secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq and supported his claims with stacks of Iraqi government contracts, complete with technical specifications. Saeed, a civil engineer, said Iraq used companies to purchase equipment with the blessing of the U.N. and then secretly used the equipment for their weapons programs.

2) Hussein launched a large-scale chemical weapons attack against Iraq's Kurdish population in the late 1980s, killing thousands. On at least 10 occasions, Hussein’s military forces have attacked Iranian and Kurdish targets with combinations of mustard gas and nerve agents through the use of aerial bombs, 122-millimeter rockets, and conventional artillery shells.

3) Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program before the Gulf War and continues his work to develop a nuclear weapon. A Sept. 9, 2002 report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an independent research organization, concluded that Hussein could build a nuclear bomb within months if he were able to obtain the appropriate radioactive material.

Although Hussein let the U.N. inspectors back in Iraq under the threat of potential U.S. military action last year, U.S. officials said he failed to persuade them that he had ceased to make such weapons.

He also failed to produce persuasive records on how and where old weapons had been destroyed, U.S. officials said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said aerial surveillance led experts to believe that he had mobile chemical weapons laboratories that were hidden from inspectors.

The campaign to drive him from power will be costly. But it is better to cut out a cancer early than wait for it to progress.

We know that terrorists know where to find us. We need to eliminate the weapons they could use and the madman who would make them.