Lucid Links (070609, Morning)

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

I suppose someone’s going to try to make hay out of the FBI “revelations” that Saddam Hussein claimed to have been bluffing about having weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) because he was more afraid of Iran than anyone else.

First, just because the country was being run by a madman doesn’t mean he had a detailed knowledge of or control of everything occurring under him.

Second, this is was Saddam, who killed thousands of Kurds in gas attacks; emptied marshlands, displacing thousands; and killed enough Iraqi people from time to time (without, ahem, ever admitting it) to fill 270 mass grave sites. Now we’re supposed to believe that a guy like this would “of course” level with the FBI, instead of, oh, perhaps thinking (see Item 1) that he had safely shipped his WMDs to Syria during the needless months of dithering at the UN.

Third, the late Saddam’s statements don’t alter the reality of media-reported specific findings of actual WMDs, findings which have never been refuted.

Fourth, those statements don’t refute an official finding that certain items found in Iraq qualify as WMDs.

Fifth, there’s this “little” matter of 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium, which IBDeditorials.com calmly noted is “the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel.”

Multiple sources show that there WERE WMDs in Iraq during and after the time going to war was being considered. The Left’s tired whining that there were NO WMDs in Iraq (not “a few”; not “no significant stockpiles of”; not “inconsequential quantities of”) was, has been, still is, and shall ever be a lie.

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An updated “word problem,” in the spirit of “Fun With Numbers“:

Problem: Chrysler sold 68,297 vehicles in June during 25 selling days. The average number of dealers during month, considering that 800 of them were forced to close their doors on June 9, was 2,600 (about 3,200 at the beginning of June, and about 2,400 after June 9). How many vehicles did the average Chrysler dealer sell per selling day in June?

Answer: 1.05 (68,297 ÷ 25 ÷ 2,600 = 1.05), barely up from 0.95 in May, even with going-out-of-business pricing at the terminated dealers.

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Read it and seethe — Jim Tarbox is a terminated Chrysler dealer who is still appealing his termination in the courts. Based on data in the article, his sales figure per selling day, at 1.23 (750 divided by roughly 305 selling days in a year divided by two dealerships), was well above the pre-termination average of 0.95 noted above — and he sold high-profit Jeeps.

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Quick primer on whose side to root for in Honduras — Code Pink is there, supporting Zelaya, who was ousted legally after attempting to consolidate his power illegally.

Not long ago, Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin, fresh from her group’s defeat and our troops’ victory in Iraq, sponsored a “Reality Tour” of Iran (you can’t make this stuff up), the purpose of which was to inform us that the Supreme Leader who literally calls all the shots and his puppet-thugs like Ahmadenijad really aren’t such bad guys.

The Code Pink-ometer indicates that those who want to keep Zelaya out of power in Honduras are clearly in the right. President Obama’s position in the matter is also Code Pink’s.

Update: For those who need a primer on why the Hondurans are right to keep Zelaya away, and why Code Pink, Barack Obama, and the 2004 State Department during Bush 43’s presidency are and were all wrong, Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s Wall Street Journal column today provides a quick catch-up.

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What’s the only difference between those who sell their wares in the world’s oldest profession perversion and Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth? Their price tag.