(White House) - U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney told a gathering of Korean War veterans on Thursday: There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors - confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth. We are, after all, dealing with the same dictator who shoots at American and British pilots in the no-fly zone on a regular basis; the same dictator who dispatched a team of assassins to murder former President Bush as he traveled abroad; the same dictator who invaded Iran and Kuwait, and has fired ballistic missiles at Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel; the same dictator who has been on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism for nearly two decades. What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness. We must not simply look away, hope for the best, and leave the matter for some future administration to resolve. As President Bush has said, time is not on our side. Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network, or a murderous dictator, or the two working together, constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action.
2002-08-30 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive