U.S. must strike Iraq before next strike hits us
| • | More local talk on war |
By Cliff Halevi
America is facing a serious threat to its existence, and we need to deal with it while we still can.
Let's review.
Al-Qaida is threatening more attacks against the United States. Radical Islamic fringe groups are recruiting soldiers from among the millions being indoctrinated with their distorted version of Islam. They are trying to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Almost weekly, European police are catching terrorist cells who are producing deadly poisons for terror attacks.
We've also discovered that al-Qaida has been planning to assassinate political and military leaders, and to use shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down passenger jets at British airports.
Although this is terrifying enough, these groups have started to forge ties with rogue nations to obtain the advanced weapons they seek. North Korea, besides threatening America directly with its one or two nukes and long-range missiles capable of hitting our West Coast, was recently caught sending a shipload of missiles to the Middle East and would be more than willing to supply nuclear components and ballistic missiles to our enemies.
Iraq has stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and its enormous oil wealth pays for weapons and finances terrorist groups. Iran, long a sponsor of radical Islam, has recently armed Hezbollah with more than 10,000 missiles, which some analysts believe will be used to strike Israel soon to open another front and impede a U.S. attack on Iraq.
Make no mistake, war is a tragic and terrible thing.
But given the lethal forces now being arrayed against us, the agonizing question facing us is whether to take on these rouge nations and terrorists now, with potentially thousands of casualties, or to wait until their next blow strikes us, with potentially tens of millions of American casualties.
Cliff Halevi is a high-tech and security consultant from Kailua.
