Ellison’s support for terrorist not a concern — Reaction to revelations spark ‘no comment’ in Congress

Ellison’s support for terrorist not a concern
Reaction to revelations spark ‘no comment’ in Congress

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Posted: January 25, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Jay Baggett
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

WND’s report that new Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, once advocated the release of a woman charged with placing pipe bombs under police cars and who was a member of a terror group that allegedly attempted to assassinate Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has generated a string of “no comments” from the parties, as well as a key congressional leader.

“The information (question) was received and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can,” A. Tianna Scozzaro, a spokeswoman in Feinstein’s Washington, D.C., office told WND when asked about the situation. But no call was returned.

One day earlier, she had explained that no comment could be obtained because lawmakers were busy waiting for President Bush’s State of the Union address later that night.

At issue is Ellison’s support for and participation in a fund-raiser in 2000 for the then-recently arrested Kathleen Soliah, a.k.a. Sara Jane Olson. She was a member of the New World Liberation Army and associated with the Symbionese Liberation Army during the 1970s and had been on the run from law enforcement for over two decades when she was captured in St. Paul, Minn.

Arrested in 1999 for placing pipe bombs beneath Los Angeles Police Department squad cars in 1975, Soliah-Olson was eventually charged with – and pleaded guilty to – the shotgun murder of Myrna Opsahl, a bank customer killed during a 1975 SLA robbery.

Soliah-Olson also pleaded guilty to placing pipe bombs under LAPD police cars.

Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert did not respond to multiple requests over several days from WND to comment on the circumstances of Ellison’s support for his fellow Minnesotan. Feinstein’s office also has not returned messages requesting information.

During her time with the SLA, Soliah-Olson, two of her siblings and several friends, exploded a series of bombs in the Bay Area under the banner of the NWLF. Following the September 1975 capture of most members of the SLA, Soliah-Olson was linked to several NWLF bombings by authorities and witnesses.

In 1976, a NWLF bomb placed beneath the bedroom window of then-San Francisco Supervisor Dianne Feinstein’s daughter failed to explode due to a rare freeze that disabled the detonator.

In 1995, Feinstein, by now a U.S. senator, testified at Senate hearings on terrorism where she explained why she began carrying a concealed weapon:

“Because less than 20 years ago I was the target of a terrorist group. It was the New World Liberation Front. They blew up power stations and put a bomb at my home when my husband was dying of cancer. And the bomb didn’t detonate. … I was very lucky. But, I thought of what might have happened. Later the same group shot out all the windows of my home.

“And, I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself, because that’s what I did. I was trained in firearms. I’d walk to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out, I was going to take them with me.”

As WND reported Ellison joined Bernadine Dohrn, one of the founders of the 1960s radical group the Weather Underground, at the Feb.12, 2000, St. Paul fund-raiser for Soliah-Olson’s legal defense.

The speech by Ellison, then a local criminal defense attorney, activist and radio talk-show host, is still preserved on an archived copy of the now-defunct Soliah-Olson defense website.

“For the people who want to incarcerate Sara Jane Olson, ain’t nothing changed,” said Ellison. “As a matter of fact, they want to settle scores with Sara Jane Olson and others who were fighting for freedom in the ’60s and ’70s.

“… I think, just like the people who want to come together and lock up Sara, we need to come together and free Sara. And all the Saras, because she’s not the only one.”

Ellison, crediting the speech given by Dohrn earlier that evening, continued.

“This is not about justice,” he said. “This is not about accountability, this is not about public safety. This is about symbolism. This is about making a point. This is about saying to you and to me that we are going to get you if you ever try to stand against what we’re about. We’re going to get you. And we’re going to lock you up and we don’t care how long it takes, we’re going to get you.”

He admitted his knowledge of the SLA wasn’t complete, but, “I can tell you what they stated … they were in favor of: It had to do with fighting poverty and fighting racism and stuff like that. I’m not even here to tell you how they did it, because I don’t know.

“… And so, I just want to welcome you for your contribution to the struggle and thank those of you who have been maintaining the struggle over the years, and say, ‘Hey, free Sara!’”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., through her Washington office, has not returned requests for a comment on a sitting congressman being on the record supporting a terrorist whose group tried to kill policemen and allegedly twice tried to murder Feinstein.

“I will get our press secretary to call you back. Thanks,” said a spokeswoman in Pelosi’s office who declined even to take the time to give her name before hanging up on a reporter.

Iran denies entry to 38 UN nuclear inspectors

Iran denies entry to 38 UN nuclear inspectors

The Associated Press

Monday, January 22, 2007

TEHRAN: Iran has barred 38 inspectors on a UN list from entering the country, the foreign minister said Monday in what appeared to be retaliation for the UN sanctions imposed last month. Iran rejected the officials on a list of potential inspectors drawn up by the International Atomic Energy Agency to carry out visits to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Others on the list remain eligible.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki did not explain the criteria for barring the inspectors but said, “the act of rejecting some inspectors is legal and in accordance with the agency’s regulations.”

“The International Atomic Energy Agency submits a long list of inspectors to member countries and the countries have the right to oppose the visit by some inspectors,” Mottaki told the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The head of the parliamentary committee of national security and foreign policy, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, had been quoted by a students’ press agency earlier as saying Iran had barred 38 inspectors.

Last month, the UN Security Council imposed limited trade sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to cease uranium enrichment, a process that produces the material for nuclear reactors or bombs.

Days later, the country’s Parliament adopted a motion that obliged the government to revise its cooperation with the monitoring agency, but gave it a free hand to determine the steps to be taken.

The United States and some of its allies accuse Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies this, saying its program is only to produce electricity from nuclear sources.

In a related development Monday, Iran’s most senior dissident cleric said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s aggressive nuclear diplomacy had harmed the country, joining a chorus of criticism that has included even the hard- line leader’s conservative allies.

The comments by Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, reflected a growing feeling among many that Ahmadinejad has concentrated too much on anti-U.S. speeches and not enough on the economy.

Iran prepares people for ‘messiah miracles’ — Government broadcasts series on imminent appearance of apocalyptic Islamic ‘Mahdi’

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53964

Paradise Lost; Why the Left Loves Muhammad

By Timothy Birdnow

“For who can yet believe, though after loss,
that all these puissant legions,
whose exile hath emptied Heaven,
shall fail to reascend Self-raised,
and repossess their native seat?”

John Milton
Paradise Lost
Book one, verses 631-634
Conservatives seem baffled by the animosity held by liberals towards Christians and Jews.  Christianity requires the believer submit to authority, accept the rule of government, be charitable to his fellow; in short, be a model citizen.  Ditto the Jews, who held these requirements even longer than the Christians.  Why are liberals so hostile to both? For that matter, why do liberals seem so smitten with that 7th century holdover known as Islam?  Why do those on the Left seem less than eager to defend our freedom and way of life from the ravages of Islamic Jihad?

To understand this, it is necessary to examine the intellectual underpinnings of modern Liberal thought. We must begin with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Godfather of modern liberalism, in his treatise The Social Contract:

“MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”

Why?  George Bush, of course, but also because

“It was in these circumstances that Jesus came to set up on earth a spiritual kingdom, which, by separating the theological from the political system, made the State no longer one, and brought about the internal divisions which have never ceased to trouble Christian peoples. As the new idea of a kingdom of the other world could never have occurred to pagans, they always looked on the Christians as really rebels, who, while feigning to submit, were only waiting for the chance to make themselves independent and their masters, and to usurp by guile the authority they pretended in their weakness to respect. This was the cause of the persecutions.

“What the pagans had feared took place. Then everything changed its aspect: the humble Christians changed their language, and soon this so-called kingdom of the other world turned, under a visible leader, into the most violent of earthly despotisms.

“Several peoples, however, even in Europe and its neighborhood, have desired without success to preserve or restore the old system: but the spirit of Christianity has everywhere prevailed. The sacred cult has always remained or again become independent of the Sovereign, and there has been no necessary link between it and the body of the State. Mahomet held very sane views, and linked his political system well together; and, as long as the form of his government continued under the caliphs who succeeded him, that government was indeed one, and so far good.”

So, Christianity and Judaism, by giving the World Separation of Church and State, destroyed the old pagan order and splintered the power of the collective will.  To those who believe in this collective and the exercise of the will of society over the individual, there can be no worse crime.  The results were ‘the most violent of earthly despotisms’ while the Islamic world, that model of theocratic benevolence, offered a government ‘so far good’”.
(It is ironic that the Left would use that very Christian concept of separation between Church and State as a tool to eliminate the author of this division.)
Those who would revolutionize society, who would remake America in their own neo-pagan, atheistic mold, find the fundamental weakening of the power of the State intolerable (since it is only by that power that their will can triumph), and would prefer to institute a system more akin to that of Muhammad.  They admire Islam for maintaining the ancient regime, although they ultimately plan to displace Allah with a Man-centered deity.
Of course, the liberal also hates being constrained in any way, and traditional morality flows, as they perceive it, from the Church down. By raising Islam as an alternative to Christendom, the liberal hopes to bludgeon the keepers of morality. Islam can help with the dirty work of crushing the usurper ideologies of Christianity and Judaism, and then, of course, their turn will come.
Then, too, we can look to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who believed not in the rationality of Christendom, but in a mythical Greek paradise ruled by “Dionysian” creative forces - emotionalism and irrationality.  These forces were vanquished by the rise of Socratic intellectualism and the coming of Christianity. Nietzsche argued further against a fixed reality in his unpublished work `On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense‘, claiming that what we think of as truth is merely a convention agreed upon by society, thus freeing Man from the tyranny of concrete reality. 
This wild spirit, this vision of the anti-mind slithers throughout liberal thought and can be seen in numerous left-wing positions; being soft on crime, spiritual environmentalism, their admiration for dictators such as Castro and Mao, and in their current love affair with radical Islam.  Terrorism is the ultimate irrational force, a violence aimed at random destruction and mayhem.  It holds kinship with the bloodlust of the Marxists and Nazis, and, as such, is a “creative force“ by Nietzschean standards. (Oh, and Nietzsche also hated Christians and Jews, and was a prime inspiration for National Socialism; copies of Thus Spoke Zarathustra were issued to German soldiers during World War One, gaining the interest of a certain corporal…)
A return to the “good old days” of the 7th Century, to a time before paradise was lost to the tyranny of Judeo-Christian intellectualism seems preferable to modern liberals, who have flatly rejected Hobbes` view of primitive life as solitary poor, hard, nasty, brutish, and short.  We especially see this in the neo-paganism of the environmentalist movement; they dream of a lost pastoral Eden where mankind could be free of the drudgery of industrial life and the endless intellectual toil. A great many on the Left wish to overthrow the current order, replacing it with this twisted Nietzschean/Rousseauian mirage stolen from the Book of Genesis.
Of course, to those who do not believe in a concrete reality, as many liberals do not, one system is as good as another, and we have no right to judge the Moslem on how he conducts his affairs. Since the Jihadist’s reality is equally valid as the Westerner’s, we are practicing moral Imperialism if we force our Judeo-Christian moral law on them.  This is exacerbated by the fact that they are Third World peoples; many liberals, deep in their hearts, are pulling for what they perceive as the underdog - in this case the terrorist murdering thug-at the expense of their own culture.  A racist, sexist, homophobic, power-mad society such as ours deserves to be taught a lesson! Even if the teacher is racist, sexist, homophobic, and power-mad, they aren’t Western, Christian, or White!  They aren’t Dick Cheney! Power to the people!
There is a strain of masochism involved here as well; the white liberal perceives himself as having unfairly benefited from his station in life, having lived well on the backs of the poor.  Somebody must be punished for this! He will flagellate himself in his mind, and will support those who will punish his country, because justice demands retribution, and America has lived far too well. If we must endure terrorist attacks to atone for our sins, so be it!  Perhaps we should do the decent thing and die; let others have their turn at the table.
Here Socialist thinking comes into play; there is only so much to go around, and we have been hogging it for too long.  For those in the Arab world to live better, we must exit the stage. It’s only fair!
The Liberal ultimately believes that the culture we have built, the triumph of Judeo-Christian values, is diseased and must be erased.  If Islam can do their work for them, so be it.  Islam, like the State under Marx, will ultimately wither away, and the paradise which predated Christ and Abraham can be restored.  At least they like to think so.
Much like Milton’s fallen angels, they believe they have been dispossessed of their rightful station by a tyrannical spiritual entity, and they are determined to repossess their native seat-the fallen pastoral paradise promised them by Rousseau and Nietzsche-via the triumph of their Collective Will. This is their prime mover, their principle motivation. It is why they were so enraged at the loss of their political power, and why they hate the “usurper“ George W. Bush; they were driven out before they could attain paradise.  This concept-lifted from Christian doctrine-that History has an ultimate end in a Humanistic Eden cannot be overstressed; the Left is consumed with this.  They feel that, by losing their political power, they have been cast into the Lake of Fire.
“They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
of Paradise, so late their happy seat,

waved over by that flaming brand, the gate

with dreadful faces throng`d, and fiery arms.”

Paradise Lost
(Book XVII, verses 642-644)

Timothy Birdnow blogs at Birdblog.

Reconstruct mosques or else: Islamabad mullahs threaten suicide attacks

How come these clerics haven’t gotten the word that Islam forbids suicide? Could it be because they understand Qur’an 9:111 to promise Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah?

Anyway, this is one reason why it is so difficult for our Friend and Ally Pakistan to reform madrasas. By Mohammad Kamran and Mohammad Imran in the Daily Times, with thanks to all who sent this in:

ISLAMABAD: The administration of Lal Masjid on Friday threatened the government of suicide attacks if it continues to demolish mosques and madrassas. The clerics also acquired a commitment to this effect from thousands of worshippers at the Friday congregation.Addressing the Friday sermon, Maulana Abdul Aziz, key prayer leader of Lal Masjid, asked the government to reconstruct the demolished mosques and urged President Musharraf to “seek Allah’s forgiveness” for demolishing “seven mosques in the country”. “We are ready to carry out suicide attacks if the government does not meet our demands,” he said, adding that the clerics would accept General Musharraf president for life if he accepts all their demands in letter and spirit.

Maulana Aziz, who is also the principal of Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Fareedia madrassas, issued a decree after citing verses from the Quran that jihad had become obligatory on all men and women against the backdrop of “prevailing evil in the country”. He demanded the government enforce a system based on the Quran and Sunnah in the country and stop dubbing jihad as terrorism….

Maulana Aziz said that millions of madrassa students had decided to sacrifice their lives in the name of Allah and the government must realise the gravity of the situation. He said that 10,000 students of Jamia Fareedia would sit in aitekaaf for 40 days to seek “divine help” and they would also be taught about the significance of jihad. “We do not want an armed conflict with the government, but we should not be pushed to the wall,” he added.

Bethlehem Christians Break Silence on Muslim Oppression

After many years of the mainstream media’s annual story about mean Israelis stealing Bethlehem’s Christmas (see here for a comical example), the truth has been revealed. Christians are fleeing every Muslim-majority territory because of the apartheid discrimination encouraged by Muslim sharia law. Land theft works because the testimony of non-Muslims is weighed less in every sharia court in the world.

A number of Christian families have finally decided to break their silence and talk openly about what they describe as Muslim persecution of the Christian minority in this city.

The move comes as a result of increased attacks on Christians by Muslims over the past few months. The families said they wrote letters to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Vatican, Church leaders and European governments complaining about the attacks, but their appeals have fallen on deaf ears.

According to the families, many Christians have long been afraid to complain in public about the campaign of “intimidation” for fear of retaliation by their Muslim neighbors and being branded “collaborators” with Israel.

This is a death sentence.

But following an increase in attacks on Christian-owned property in the city over the past few months, some Christians are no longer afraid to talk about the ultra-sensitive issue. And they are talking openly about leaving the city.

“The situation is very dangerous,” said Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of the Beit Sahur-based private Al-Mahd (Nativity) TV station. “I believe that 15 years from now there will be no Christians left in Bethlehem. Then you will need a torch to find a Christian here. This is a very sad situation.”

Qumsiyeh, one of the few Christians willing to speak about the harsh conditions of their community, has been the subject of numerous death threats. His house was recently attacked with fire-bombs, but no one was hurt.

Qumsiyeh said he has documented more than 160 incidents of attacks on Christians in the area in recent years.

He said a monk was recently roughed up for trying to prevent a group of Muslim men from seizing lands owned by Christians in Beit Sahur. Thieves have targeted the homes of many Christian families and a “land mafia” has succeeded in laying its hands on vast areas of land belonging to Christians, he added.

Fuad and Georgette Lama woke up one morning last September to discover that Muslims from a nearby village had fenced off their family’s six-dunam plot in the Karkafa suburb south of Bethlehem. “A lawyer and an official with the Palestinian Authority just came and took our land,” said 69-year-old Georgette Lama.

The couple was later approached by senior PA security officers who offered to help them kick out the intruders from the land. “We paid them $1,000 so they could help us regain our land,” she said, almost in tears. “Instead of giving us back our land, they simply decided to keep it for themselves. They even destroyed all the olive trees and divided the land into small plots, apparently so that they could offer each for sale.” When her 72-year-old husband, Fuad, went to the land to ask the intruders to leave, he was severely beaten and threatened with guns.

“My husband is after heart surgery and they still beat him,” Georgette Lama said. “These people have no heart. We’re afraid to go to our land because they will shoot at us. Ever since the beating, my husband is in a state of trauma and has difficulties talking.”

The Lamas have since knocked on the doors of scores of PA officials in Bethlehem seeking their intervention, but to no avail. At one stage, they sent a letter to Abbas, who promised to launch an investigation.

“We heard that President Mahmoud Abbas is taking our case very seriously,” said Georgette Lama. “But until now he hasn’t done anything to help us get our land back. We are very concerned because we’re not the only ones suffering from this phenomenon. Most Christians are afraid to speak, but I don’t care because we have nothing more to lose.”

A Christian businessman who asked not to be identified said the conditions of Christians in Bethlehem and its surroundings had deteriorated ever since the area was handed over to the PA in 1995.

“Every day we hear of another Christian family that has immigrated to the US, Canada or Latin America,” he said.

Democrats who also “took us into this war recklessly”

by Bill Levinson

Senator James Webb (D-VA) said this in his rebuttal to George Bush’s State of the Union address.

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable ­ and predicted ­ disarray that has followed

Since he (inadvertantly of course) left out some other people who “took us into this war recklessly,” we will help him out by reminding him and the American public of what his friends John Kerry, Hillary “I Want a Third Term in 2008″ Clinton, Thomas Daschle, Albert “The World is Melting” Gore, and William “I did not have sex with that woman, depending on what you mean by sex” Jefferson Clinton said about Iraq.

# John Kerry, 23 February 1998: “Saddam Hussein has already used these weapons and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so. That is a threat to the stability of the Middle East. It is a threat with respect to the potential of terrorist activities on a global basis. It is a threat even to regions near but not exactly in the Middle East.”

# Thomas Daschle, 1998: a 1998 use-of-force resolution would “send as clear a message as possible that we are going to force, one way or another, diplomatically or militarily, Iraq to comply with international law.” “We have exhausted virtually our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so?”

# Albert Gore, 16 December 1998: “If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He’s already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons. He poison-gassed his own people. He used poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors. This man has no compunction about killing lots and lots of people.”

# Saddam Abused His Last Chance, Clinton Says By Linda D. Kozaryn American Forces Press Service [As a publication of the United States Government, this is believed to be in the public domain]
WASHINGTON — A month ago, the United States called off its war planes to give Saddam Hussein one last chance to cooperate. When he failed to do so, the United States took action.
President Clinton ordered air strikes Dec. 16 against Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. Warships and combat aircraft began bombarding the defiant Gulf state at 5 p.m. EST — 1 a.m. in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.
…“Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons,” Clinton said. The Iraqi dictator has used these weapons against his neighbors and his own people, he said, and “left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.”
…Butler’s conclusions, Clinton said, proved to be “stark, sobering and profoundly disturbing.” Instead of living up to its agreement, he said, “Iraq has abused its final chance.”
He said Iraq had placed new restrictions on the inspectors, further obstructed inspections and failed to turn over all requested documents. In one instance, the Iraqis removed all documents, furniture and equipment from a building prior to a U.N. inspection.
Butler’s report concluded Iraq has ensured U.N. inspectors could make no progress toward disarmament. Even if the inspectors could stay in Iraq, Clinton said, their work would be a sham.
“Saddam’s deception has defeated their effectiveness,” he said. “Instead of the inspectors disarming Saddam, the Iraqi dictator has disarmed the inspectors.”
Clinton said he and his national security advisers agreed that Hussein presented a clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere. He said he deemed military action necessary to prove the international community, led by the United States, had not lost its will. Failure to act, Clinton said, would have “fatally undercut the fear of force that stops Saddam from acting to gain domination in the region.”

# “Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation … And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real…” - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003 http://www.glennbeck.com/news/01302004.shtml

# Hillary Rodham Clinton, Floor Speech of 10 October 2002 (from her own Senate Web site): “In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.” http://clinton.senate.gov/speeches/iraq_101002.html

http://www.house.gov/pelosi/priraq1.htm
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi

Statement on U.S. Led Military Strike Against Iraq
December 16, 1998

As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.

The responsibility of the United States in this conflict is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, to minimize the danger to our troops and to diminish the suffering of the Iraqi people. The citizens of Iraq have suffered the most for Saddam Hussein’s activities; sadly, those same citizens now stand to suffer more. I have supported efforts to ease the humanitarian situation in Iraq and my thoughts and prayers are with the innocent Iraqi civilians, as well as with the families of U.S. troops participating in the current action.

I believe in negotiated solutions to international conflict. This is, unfortunately, not going to be the case in this situation where Saddam Hussein has been a repeat offender, ignoring the international community’s requirement that he come clean with his weapons program. While I support the President, I hope and pray that this conflict can be resolved quickly and that the international community can find a lasting solution through diplomatic means.

http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Letters,%20reports%20and%20statements/levin-10-9-98.html
CONCERN OVER RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN IRAQ
(Senate - October 09, 1998)

HON. CARL LEVIN

in the Senate

October 9, 1998

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, today, along with Senators McCain, Lieberman, Hutchison and twenty-three other Senators, I am sending a letter to the President to express our concern over Iraq’s actions and urging the President `after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.’

At the outset, I believe it would be useful to review the events that led up to the requirement for the destruction of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. At the time that Iraq unlawfully invaded and occupied its neighbor Kuwait, the UN Security Council imposed economic and weapons sanctions on Iraq .

After Iraqi forces had been ousted from Kuwait by the U.S.-led coalition and active hostilities had ended, but while coalition forces were still occupying Iraqi territory, the UN Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, conducted a review of Iraq’s history with weapons of mass destruction and made a number of decisions in April 1991 to achieve its goals, including a formal cease fire.

With respect to Iraq’s history, the Security Council noted Iraq’s threat during the Gulf War to use chemical weapons in violation of its treaty obligations, Iraq’s prior use of chemical weapons, Iraq’s use of ballistic missiles in unprovoked attacks, and reports that Iraq attempted to acquire materials for a nuclear weapons program contrary to its treaty obligations.