Other Columns by Frank Salvato
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Recently, Arianna Huffington, one of the few people in our country to shift from conservatism to liberalism, appeared on FOX News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor. Mr. O'Reilly invited Ms. Huffington on his show because he has been searching for anyone on the left side of the aisle who has a plan for winning the war against radical Islamofascism beyond just criticizing the Bush Administration. But a much larger rhetorical door to the Liberal-Left's soul was opened during the interview, a door that exposed their current approach to just about everything political in nature; "So what?!"

I have pointed out for years that the number one reason given for going to war in Iraq was Saddam Hussein's penchant for committing human rights violations against his own people. Aside from the much ignored genocide of the Iraqi Kurds, Saddam Hussein's regime routinely subjected the Iraqi people to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation and rape. Wives were raped and abused in front of their husbands and children were injured and killed in the presence of their parents. These are not allegations, they are facts and there is ample film and first-hand testimony to prove it.

These true atrocities -- not trumped-up atrocities like putting underwear on a terrorist's head or playing loud rock music while making a terrorist stand up for hours -- led to UN Security Council Resolution 688, demanding that Hussein cease the oppression of the Iraqi people. He instantly ignored and continued to ignore the UN demands until the moment he was pulled from his less than presidential spider hole.

There was a time in the not too distant past when Liberals in the United States would have been calling for definitive action against such inhumanity. Groups like Human Rights Watch would have petitioned our government and the United Nations to act against the human rights violations committed against the ethnic minorities under Hussein's regime. N.O.W. would have vigorously denounced the oppression of women under Sharia Law. Gay rights groups would have spotlighted homosexuals throughout the Middle East who were routinely executed for their sexual preferences. Religious leaders of all faiths, sans Islam, would have called for religious tolerance in a land where there was little. Greenpeace would have mobilized in an effort to protest Hussein's torching of oil wells upon his exit from Kuwait, an environmental disaster of gargantuan proportions.

Yes, there was a time when all of this would have been coming out of the Democratic Party, from the Liberal-Left, the Progressive-Left. Today the opposite is true. While many Conservatives struggle against the ever-increasing vitriol of the anti-war movement and one-sided reporting of the mainstream media, the fact remains, it is the Conservative base in the United States that is resolute to making the sacrifices needed to make the world not only a better place for all people, but a safer place for everyone.

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