Saddam Hussein...Good Riddance!

Our last president, George W. Bush, is one of my heroes. His Vice-President, Dick Cheney, is someone I admire greatly. Don Rumsfeld didn't do a very good job during his last couple of years as Secretary of Defense, but his mistakes were tactical, not moral, and I admire his service to our country. In the eyes of many liberals, these admissions of who I admire, unfortunately, are tantamount to admitting hero-worship of the upper echelon of Nazi Germany. But if one can look beyond one's own BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome), I believe it becomes apparent that many of President Bush's decisions and actions showed a rare and heroic courage and brand of leadership rarely shown among politicians.

To understand why I consider President Bush's decision to intervene in Iraq heroic, I need to review some facts about the man dethroned as a result of U.S. action: Saddam Hussein. Unlike President Bush, Saddam Hussein is rightly and fairly compared to Adolf Hitler. Both Hitler and Hussein engaged in mass murder, political repression, terror, torture, unprovoked acts of war against neighboring and non-neighboring countries, antisemitism, manipulation of the diplomatic overtures of other nations, the breaking of agreements with other countries, and other horrible evils. Both precipitated long wars that decimated their neighbors and their own populations. Both men were exceedingly self-centered, power-hungry, and cruel, and they needed to be stopped. And in both cases, the United States played a big part in doing the stopping. For that, I am proud to be an American.

Saddam Hussein's brand of torture was particularly heinous and cruel. Here are a few examples of methods of torture regularly used by Hussein's thugs to extract confessions from enemies and to punish those who dared to oppose him:

• Gouging out of victims' eyes.
• Piercing of hands with electric drills. In one documented case, acid was poured in the open wounds.
• Hanging victims by their wrists and then lowering them into acid baths. This method was used frequently during the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990 and 1991.
• Nailing victims' tongues to wooden boards.
• Raping women while forcing their husbands or fathers to watch the rapes.
• Using bees and scorpions to attack and sting young, naked children in front of their parents.
• Pouring of boiling water into victims' rectums.
• Using hot irons and blow torches to burn victims.

Of course, Saddam has long been known for his use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers in the long Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's, as well as against Kurdish citizens of Iraq. And, tragically, there are the mass graves discovered in a multitude of locations in Iraq, a testimony to Hussein's 25 year reign of terror and mass murder in Iraq.

I believe that the U.S. had good reason to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power in 2003. In order to keep power after his expulsion from Kuwait in 1991, Hussein agreed to a series of limitations, sanctions, and inspections, agreements which he broke in 17 distinct ways over the next decade. Each of these breaches came with the understanding that they would end the cease fire of 1991 and result in new hostilities against Hussein. Saddam also failed to comply with the program set up to destroy his weapons of mass destruction. We all know that the stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq were not found in the amounts we expected. However, the intelligence agencies of literally dozens of countries were all convinced that these programs had not been terminated, and that Saddam had certainly not allowed verification of the destruction of these weapons, as agreed upon in the 1991 cease fire agreement. Even Saddam's own generals were fooled by Hussein into believing that the WMD program was a greater reality than it turned out to be.

My bottom line, however, is that Hussein needed to be removed from power because he was a great force of evil and cruelty whose continued position of power meant continuing suffering for the people of Iraq. The U.S. had the power and opportunity to rid Iraq and the world of this great evil; not to do so would have been wrong. I know that some question the right of the United States to get involved in other countries' affairs, even when great evil can be stopped by our intervention. But if we had failed to act based on the notion that it was simply "none of our business," then a man of unspeakable cruelty would have continued to destroy innocent lives. I believe that the power to stop cruelty and evil comes with the responsibility to actually act on that power. President Bush and his administration saw this and acted. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein breathing its air. Thank you, President Bush.