Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction?

You’ve seen the bumper stickers, “Bush lied.” You have heard the idealistic talk about an impeachment and viewed the Democrats' political commercials, “Bush: Misleader.”

According to polls, most Americans believe that Bush either misled or possibly was himself misled by faulty intelligence on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. For the past three years, the news media has told us on a daily basis that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, no biological and chemical weapons. The rumors of a nuclear program were either fabricated or greatly exaggerated. Now America is in Iraq for a long duration and is responsible for needless suffering and shameful destruction. And so on.

Yet the Whitehouse still has on its web site a brief from 1993 explaining to the world America’s reasons for removing Saddam from power:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/nationalsecurity/disarm.html

Among the charges listed against Saddam:

• The U.N. and U.S. intelligence sources have known for some time that Saddam Hussein has materials to produce chemical and biological weapons, but he has not accounted for them:
• 26,000 liters of anthrax—enough to kill several million people
• 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin
• 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents
• Almost 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents
• From three Iraqi defectors, we know that Iraq in the late 1990s had several mobile biological weapons labs. But he has not disclosed them.

In addition, British intelligence still stands by its claim that Saddam sought to buy uranium from Nigeria.

It’s time for all of us to separate the facts from politically motivated rhetoric and examine these claims. There are mass graves of hundreds of thousands who died due to his use of these “weapons of mass destruction.” They are called WMDs for good reason. We know for a fact that Saddam once had these weapons. He had them before the first Gulf War in 1990 and used them against Iranians and his own countrymen, the Kurds, in the 1980s.

We are now hearing daily testimony in Saddam’s trial of inhumane torture, war atrocities and the attempted genocide of the Kurds. Just this week, a CIA leak confirmed that there are several hours of tape-recorded surveillance of Saddam bragging that he had these weapons and planned to use them against Israel and the U.S.

We know that Saddam had WMDs at one time. The logical question that few in the media ask is, “If he did not have them, then why would he risk his own destruction by not cooperating with the UN inspectors.”

There can only be a few solutions to this paradox.

1. These weapons of mass destruction still exist and are hidden in Iraq or in another terrorist country such as Jordan or Iran.
2. Saddam disposed of these weapons shortly after the first Gulf War as required by the U.N resolution, but in his self-destructive insanity refused to acknowledge that he had done so.
3. These weapons never existed — even in the 1980s — but were a fabrication of western intelligence. The mass graves are a fabrication as well.

Logically, I cannot think of a fourth alternative. Email me if you think of one and I’ll add it to the poll at:

http://forerunner.com/discussion

You decide.

Van Tillian Presuppositional Theonomic Ethics

Cornelius Van Til was a 20th century protégé of the Dutch Reformed theologian and president of the Netherlands, Abraham Kuyper. Van Til created a school of Christian apologetics and an ethical system based on Kuyperian presuppositionalism. Although Van Til had some disagreements with Kuyper, the two systems are similar.

According to Van Til, presuppositionalism is the idea that all philosophical reasoning is ultimately circular. Every argument begins with an unprovable premise. Given a true premise, one can arrive at a valid conclusion that is equally true. The problem is that one can never be absolutely certain that the premises of an argument are true. Van Til said that scriptural presuppositions are true because the Bible is God’s Word. To Van Til, any other rationalist system was untrustworthy because it must be based on the presuppositions of human beings corrupted by the Fall of Adam.

A “true” premise implies the sufficiency of human reason. One may attempt to prove a premise through argumentation. Yet these arguments will be supported by equally unprovable premises. A true premise implies that one has either consciously or unconsciously arrived at a foregone conclusion. Circular reasoning is inescapable. Furthermore, this is always the reasoning of an imperfect mind. Therefore, only premises that come from a perfect mind, such as those originating from the inscripturated Word of God, are trustworthy and reliable.

Van Til’s system of apologetics states that the Christian ought not to use rational argument to attempt to prove the truth of God’s Word to non-believers. The Christian ought to start all argumentation with scripture as a presupposition. Van Til did not deny that there are rational arguments that prove the validity of the Word of God. On the contrary, nothing exists except proof. Yet human beings have a problem with comprehending the Word of God as truth. The problem is not philosophical in nature, but rather moral. The problem is that our understanding is clouded by original sin and therefore we have a problem with comprehending the truth.

This way of thinking cuts across the grain of modern rational thought which proposes that one must prove something in order to believe it to be true. However, Van Tillian logic has had many forerunners in the medieval and ancient world.

St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury wrote, “For I seek not to understand in order that I may believe; but I believe in order that I may understand, for I believe for this reason: that unless I believe, I cannot understand.”

This is the opposite of the famous maxim, “I think therefore I am.” Rationalists such as Descartes have always wanted to “understand it” or “prove it” in order to believe it. However, Anselm’s statement is undeniably true. All truth is based on certain unprovable presuppositions. We must first have faith in order to know anything.

Theocracy of Ancient Israel: Pattern for Colonial New England

Theonomy is a term for the belief that the moral law of God is to be applied as a standard of righteousness for governing individuals and society. The term comes from the Greek for "God's law" and is the concept that all of the moral laws (those excluding the non-ceremonial and dietary laws) given to Moses and recorded in the Pentateuch are binding on people of all nations forever. Theonomy posits God's law as the only just standard for regulations in every human institution: family, church, and state.

Theocracy is the term for a nation ruled by God and God's law. Theocracy does not imply rule of the state by the church. The proper term here would be an ecclesiocracy. Although the church and the state are separate spheres of government, both are to be ruled by God's law.

Detractors of theonomy and theocracy like to argue that the civil law and its sanctions were limited to Old Covenant Israel because there was no separation of church and state in Israel's theocracy. Even a casual survey of the law of Moses disproves this conjecture. The Old Covenant commands that "alien and sojourners" in Israel, even those who were uncircumcised heathen, were bound to the civil law (Lev. 24:22).

Yet these foreigners were not required to keep most of the ceremonial aspects of the Mosaic law (Ex. 12:43,44,48; 9:33; Deut. 14:21). Only the circumcised were allowed to participate in the Passover, the old covenant communion meal. The two "marks of the covenant" separated members of the "church" from members of the "state." There was also a separation between the priests of the ceremonial law, the Levites, and the magistrates of the civil law, the elders and judges (Lev. 14:35; 27:11; Deut. 1:16; 16:18; 19:12; 21:2; 25:1).

In the New Covenant, the primary purpose of the church is to minister God's grace in the world. Christ's commission to the church was to preach salvation to the nations (Matt. 28:18-20). The Apostles were given the keys of the kingdom and the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, in order to carry out the Great Commission. The state is to be a minister of justice (Rom. 13:1-7). It alone is given the sword of power to execute vengeance on those who would violate the law of God as expressed in the laws of the civil sphere. The church is never to control civil government, but may instruct state proceedings with biblical counsel (Deut. 17:8-13). The church is also expected to train godly men for civil leadership.

The problem, of course, with the colonial Massachusetts "theocracy" was that it was not a true theocracy with separation of powers, but an ecclesiocracy. Cotton Mather wrote: "Yet, after all...in this world a Church-State was impossible, whereinto there enters nothing which defiles."

On the other hand, it was this experiment with self-government which finally led to the emancipation of the colonies from the tyranny of the British crown in later years. In all fairness to the Massachusetts Puritans, we must realize that they came to the New World at a time when the Protestant Reformation was still very much in progress in England. A unifying and comprehensive church confession describing the relationship between church and state had not been adopted. Connecticut, Plymouth, and Rhode Island experimented with alternate forms of theocracy.

According to 19th century Harvard historian John Fiske: "The spirit in which the Hebrew prophet rebuked and humbled an idolatrous king was a spirit they could comprehend. Such a spirit was sure to manifest itself in cramping measures and in ugly acts of persecution; but it is none the less the fortunate alliance of that fervid religious enthusiasm with the Englishman's love of self government that our modern freedom owes its existence."

Modern theonomists can neither completely defend the rigidity of the Massachusetts Bay Colony nor completely disparage the attempts towards a godly separation of powers by Roger Williams and the Rhode Island colony. A more honest approach would be to settle on the example of civil liberty found in the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.

The United States Constitution owes allegiance to Thomas Hooker, more than any other man, for providing a working model of decentralized government, one which had not appeared on the face of the earth since the time of the ancient Hebrews.

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut was the first biblical covenant in modern times which founded a federal government. The Mayflower Compact was not a constitution, in that it did not define and limit the functions of government. The Magna Charta had the nature of a written constitution because it described the rights of the people, but it did not create a civil government.

This constitution states that Connecticut is submitted to the "Savior and Lord." There are none of the patronizing references to a "dread sovereign" or a "gracious king" nor the slightest allusion to the authority of British government or any other government over the colony. It presumes Connecticut to be self-governing. It does not describe church membership as a condition for suffrage. In this federation, all powers not granted to the General Court remained in the towns. Each township had equal representation in the General Court. The governor and the council were chosen by a majority vote of the people with almost universal suffrage.

In his sermon to the General Court, May 31, 1638, Hooker said, "The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people...the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance...they who have power to appoint officers and magistrates have the right also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them."

John Fiske writes: "It was the first written constitution known to history, that created a government, and it marked the beginnings of the American republic, of which Thomas Hooker deserves more than any other man to be called the father. The government of the United States today is in lineal descent more nearly related to that of Connecticut than to that of any of the other thirteen colonies."

________________

John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England or The Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil Law and Religious Liberty , illustrated edition (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, 1889), pp. 274, 137, 140.

An Open Letter to the Pro-life Movement

"Abortion brings into the public arena a Van Tilian fact of life: an
aborted baby is either dead or alive. There is no neutral ground, no
halfway condition, in between dead or alive. The abortion issue was
the wedge of Van Tilian self-consciousness for millions of
Christians. They gained the first glimmer of awareness regarding a
Van Tilian truth applied to civil law: the State is not neutral.

"We began to see placards: 'Abortion is Murder.' But then ... that
terrifying judicial question: 'What is the proper civil penalty for
murder?' The answer was obvious: execution. The anti-abortionist
leaders all began to waffle, and they have waffled ever since."

- Gary North
In the most recent issue of Chalcedon Report

************

I concur.

I used to own a house across the street from an abortion clinic,
before it was closed and then bulldozed. We have an extensive web
site dealing with pro-life happenings from the mid-1990s until
present.

See: http://forerunner.com/fyi/

I conceived the site as a way to identify a "mystery abortionist" who
wanted to keep his identity secret. Meredith Raney now runs the site
and has added volumes of information. Mademoiselle Magazine wrote a
critique of the web site a few years ago. The abortuary owners used
to accuse the local pro-lifers of being responsible for cutting their
business in half. They even filed four federal lawsuits against us as
a group claiming that the existence of the web site was a tortious
(yes, that's actually a word) offense.

I wrote an "open Letter to the Pro-life Community" a while back,
making the same point North makes above.

http://forerunner.com/abortionwars/abortionwars.html

Pro-life activists have done a lot to stop individual abortions from
occurring. But if we want a permanent solution, that we do have to
come to grips with the fact that although abortion has been
restricted in American history, we are one of the few nations on
earth that has not ever criminalized abortion.

There IS a lot we can do in the meantime. I chronicle some of these
in my "Open Letter."

But few want to deal with the weighty question of what criminal
sanctions need to be enforced.

While it is widely held that abortion was legalized in 1973 through
Roe v. Wade, this idea is absolutely wrong. While abortion was
restricted in various places, abortion has never been nationally
criminalized in American history. We must begin to create the kind of
tension in the minds of people that will help them to extend beyond
the current debate over the morality of abortion versus a woman's
right to choose. We must change the argument. Should abortion be
restricted by the state in the same way that the FDA puts
restrictions on food production? Or should an abortionist be tried as
a murderer and executed?

See my "Open Letter to the Pro-life Movement" for more details.

- Jay Rogers

The Forerunner web site -- http://forerunner.com -- redesigned and updated

The Forerunner web site -- http://forerunner.com -- has been
redesigned and updated.

Since 1996 when I first put up the site, I stayed with an austere
design -- never updating the look. The vast majority of the 1600 plus
pages were just text and minimal graphics, because I thought that
people mainly wanted information to load fast -- especially in
regions and countries where there is no access to broadband.

I reconsidered this recently and decided that I wanted to identify
"The Forerunner" and "Jay Rogers" to each visitor. Within the first
few days I had some old friends who I hadn't heard from in years
email me.

Every page has a new look. The site no longer looks like it was
designed ten years ago. If you haven't see the web site this year,
check it out and remember to reload your cache.

- Jay Rogers