Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Friday, Dec. 13, 2002

“I’m frankly stupefied that we haven’t seen a more rigorous effort made to look at some of that evidence, whether it’s about the first World Trade Center attack … whether it’s about the Oklahoma City bombing … or whether it’s 9/11,” said Frank Gaffney, president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. “I think there’s more there than has met the eye so far.”

NewsMax.com has cited the work of investigative TV reporter Jayna Davis, who once told us that she has enough material on this “to fill 10 books.” Gaffney again cited her work on the connections between the Oklahoma City bombers and forces linked to Iraq.

His remarks at the Eighth Annual Pearl Harbor Day Dinner at the Institute of World Politics came in answer to a question from NewsMax as to what extent Americans will be in danger once the war with Iraq begins. He responded that worrying about “some of those scenarios [is] prudent and responsible.”

'Mortal Peril'

“This could go very badly,” the onetime Reagan administration official acknowledged. “I think we shouldn’t be under any illusion about the destructive capabilities at Saddam Hussein’s disposal and his ability to make common cause with other people who can help get [deadly weapons] here, or his own forces who can get them around the region.” This “represents a very serious mortal peril potentially for large numbers of people.”

The defense expert praised President Bush’s announcement that he would make smallpox vaccines available to all Americans “simply because it is a distinct possibility that smallpox might be introduced in this country” by Saddam or one of his colleagues.

The assistant defense secretary during the Reagan years believes the Iraqi people are key to whether things go “really badly or perhaps quite well.”

No Time for Wimpiness

Those people live under that murderous regime, which uses hideous torture to crush dissent. If they think the U.S. and its allies are there to liberate them, they could be encouraged to rise up and overthrow Hussein.

On the other hand, the audience was told, if the Iraqi people think we will be there to keep them under Saddam, “as we did in 1991,” then we won’t be able to count on them.

“If I were they,” Gaffney said, “and saw us doing that again on top of what we’ve done with them before, I don’t know that I would rally to our cause.” In fact, just the opposite could happen. If they don’t think we’re serious, they would help Saddam by going after Americans or hiding weapons of mass destruction just to save themselves from a blood-soaked evil man who will still be around.

It is for this reason that Gaffney is concerned about “the sort of backing and filling that the administration has been going through.” Any ambivalence leads Saddam, and the Iraqi people as well, to think we are not serious.

At times, he says, the administration appears to have modified its demand for a regime change, adopting the language of what some call “the striped-pants diplomats at the State Department.” Suddenly the demand for a “regime change” can also mean “behavior change.”

That sort of mixed message dilutes the credibility of the president’s resolve, expressed “most of the time” about the need to “help free the Iraqi people.” Anyone who changes his “behavior” once can change it again.

Remember, the speaker added, Saddam may be getting the wrong message about American resolve from “a lot of things he sees on CNN and reads in our newspapers and hears in our congressional debates.” It could be enough to convince Hussein that he can “cheat death.” He will back away “only when he starts getting pressure.”

Then the attendees at the Institute of World Politics heard this warning: The consequences of turning a blind eye to Saddam Hussein’s designs on America and threat to the world “would make the consequences of turning the other cheek when the Japanese hit us and tried to dominate the Pacific pale into insignificance” by comparison.

Gaffney, whose organization’s focus is “Promoting Peace Through Strength,” came to the dinner to share his thoughts when the scheduled speaker, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a high-ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, was unable to make it.

In the 1990 book “None Dare Call It Treason, 25 Years Later,” author John Stormer says Gaffney was a part of the Pentagon faction in the Reagan administration that believed the Soviets could not be trusted and that the U.S. must have a strong nuclear defense. His belief that a firm resolve is the best defense against massive death and destruction still holds in the showdown with Iraq.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Bush Administration

Saddam Hussein/Iraq

War on Terrorism

Editor's note:
Saddam Hussein’s race to make a nuclear bomb