Is Senator Kennedy Leader of a Fifth Column in the US Senate?

October 13, 2002

by Mary Mostert, Analyst - Banner of Liberty

In his speech on Iraq last Monday, President Bush stated (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html), “America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

However, it would appear that Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would have us wait for the mushroom cloud. In a speech given on the floor of the Senate (http://thomas.loc.gov/r107/r107.html) on the same day that President Bush spoke, Kennedy said, “The Bush Administration says we must take pre-emptive action against Iraq. But what the Administration is really calling for is preventive war, which flies in the face of international rules of acceptable behavior.” He compared Bush’s actions to “the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor (which) was regarded as a preventive strike by Japan, because the Japanese were seeking to block a planned military buildup by the United States in the Pacific.”

Kennedy, and 46 other Democrats, including Majority Leader Tom Daschle, voted against the Senate Resolution 2 on January 12, 1991 authorizing the use of US Military against Saddam Hussein. Now Kennedy is saying that Bush’s determination to protect America against further acts of terror coming from Iraq is comparable to the “act of dishonorable treachery” committed by Japan at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

President Bush wants to enforce UN resolutions directed at Iraq and the 1991 Senate Resolution that are still in force. Senate Resolution 2 stated: “in the absence of full compliance by Iraq with its resolutions, the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 678 has authorized member states of the United Nations to use all necessary means, after January 15, 1991, to uphold and implement all relevant Security Council resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area.”

In January 1991 Kennedy objected to kicking Saddam’s army out of Kuwait, and apparently he STILL opposes that Senate Resolution. At the time, Kuwait city was occupied by Saddam Hussein’s forces and, according to reports given to the Senate, Iraq had forced most of the Kuwaitis out of their country. Thousands of Iraqis had been moved into their homes and many of the 350,000 Palestinians in Kuwait had been organized into a pro-Iraqi force. The Iraqis also allowed Abu Nidal, who claimed responsibility for bombing PM Flight 103 over Lockerbie and founder of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, which the U.S. State Department considered “the most dangerous terrorist organization in existence” to set up headquarters in Kuwait City.

The presence of Abu-Nidal and other known terrorists in Iraq for more than 10 years is a direct violation of the 1991 UN Resolution 687 (gopher://gopher.undp.org/00/undocs/scd/scouncil/s91/4%09+Text/plain) that outlined the cease-fire agreement. Paragraph 32 of UN Resolution 687 requires that Iraq “will not commit or support any act of international terrorism or allow any organization directed towards commission of such acts to operate within its territory and to condemn unequivocally and renounce all acts, methods and practices of terrorism;” Throughout the entire eight years of the Clinton Administration, Abu Nidal lived in Baghdad, protected by Saddam Hussein. Nidal supposedly committed suicide in Baghdad on August 21, 2002. And of course Iraq has openly been financing suicide bombers that have killed hundreds of Israelis.

Paragraph 12 of UN Resolution 687 requires that “Iraq shall unconditionally agree not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material or any subsystems or components or any research, development, support or manufacturing facilities related to the above.” To assure that Paragraph 12 is implemented, Paragraph 13 requires “the future ongoing monitoring and verification of Iraq’s compliance with paragraph 12 above, including an inventory of all nuclear material in Iraq subject to the Agency’s verification and inspections to confirm that Agency safeguards cover all relevant nuclear activities in Iraq.”

Paragraph 9 of UN Resolution 687 requires “immediate on-site inspection of Iraq’s biological, chemical and missile capabilities.” Yet, the Clinton Administration allowed Saddam Hussein to kick the inspectors out of Iraq in 1998. Kennedy also was one of 41 Democrats, including Daschle, Durbin, Wellstone and Lautenberg, who is running again after Torricelli quit, who voted against the American Missile Protection Act of 1998 that would have adopted as US policy the “deployment of a missile defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States.”

When one party to a ceasefire ignores the provisions of the ceasefire, the war it was supposed to end obviously hasn’t and it flares up again. It is not a “preventive” or a “new” war.

Prior to September 11, 2001, perhaps we could chalk Kennedy’s votes and views up to mere stupidity. However, AFTER thousands of Americans died on 9-11, Kennedy comparing President George W. Bush’s determination to make Saddam Hussein abide by the cease-fire agreements of 1991, with Pearl Harbor represents something far more sinister. He sounds like the leader of a Fifth Column.

For the younger generation, the term “Fifth Column” was coined in the 1930s by Emilio Mola Vidal, a Nationalist general during the Spanish Civil War and used throughout World War II. As Vidal’s four army columns marched on Madrid, he referred to his supporters within the capital as his "fifth column," because they were undermining the Spanish government from within.

We seem to have a Fifth Column in OUR capital today, headed by Senator Kennedy, who is trying to undermine America’s government by telling the world our president’s efforts to make Saddam Hussein abide by provisions of the 1991 ceasefire is a “preventive war” comparable to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Thursday afternoon the Iraq Resolution passed the House in a vote of 296 to 133. And, in spite of Kennedy’s efforts and West Virginia Sen. Byrd’s dark reminder to President Bush that Charles 1st of England was beheaded when he didn’t do what Parliament wanted him to do, about 1:30 AM the Iraq Resolution passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23.

To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com

Links:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html - President George W. Bush on Iraq – October 7, 2002

http://thomas.loc.gov/r107/r107.html - Congressional Record - October 7, 2002 – Senate – Item 8 – Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) – “The Administration is really calling for is preventive war,”

gopher://gopher.undp.org/00/undocs/scd/scouncil/s91/4%09+Text/plain - Desert Storm Cease Fire – April 3, 1991 – UN Security Council document

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Mary Mostert was writing professionally on political issues as a teen-ager in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1940s. In the 1960s, she wrote a weekly column for the Rochester Times Union, a Gannett paper and was one of 52 American women who attended the 17 Nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland to ban testing of nuclear bombs in the atmosphere. She was a licensed building contractor for 29 years, as she raised her six children. She served an 18 month mission as Public Affairs Director for the Africa Area for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1990-91. In the 1990s she wrote a book, Coming Home, Families Can Stop the Unraveling of America, edited the Reagan Monthly Monitor and talk show host Michael Reagan’s Information Interchange for seven years. She now operates the website, Banner of Liberty.

Send the author an E mail at Mostert@ConservativeTruth.org.

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