Thank you, George W. Bush - for preventing a nuclear attack on the U.S.

Dear President Bush,

I'm writing this note to personally thank you for having prevented a nuclear attack on the United States, and putting away the most dangerous individual on the planet... Saddam Hussein.

Unlike most of your detractors, I have a very high I.Q., am a card-carrying member of Mensa, and thus am capable of much greater depth of thinking and analysis than the knee-jerk liberals who have been denigrating you ever since you left office.  I think of "intelligence" as being composed of two elements: cognitive skill and analytical reasoning ability.  The first can be thought of as "finding the dots", and the latter simply described as "connecting the dots".

Fortunately, I was able to see through all of the liberal press accusations, apply superior analytical skill, and come up with what I believe is the much truer vision of your administration.

One thing I hear quite often, for example, is the inane statement that you "lied" about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction.  The argument is always based on something like "they didn't find any".. and only a moron would think that if you can't find your car keys, that means they never existed.

I've read, for example, Georges Sada's book Saddam's Secrets and can find no reason to not believe he is sincere in his reporting of events prior to the U.S. intervention in Iraq.  General Sada was the deputy air minister under Saddam, and survived all of his cleansings simply because he was a Christian, and thus immune from the internal struggle between the various Muslim factions.  In his book, he describes in some detail how Saddam stripped passenger jets of their seating, converting them to cargo planes so they could quickly remove large amounts of something quite secret while avoiding notice.  I'm guessing most of the more compact "weapons of mass destruction" were removed to Syria prior to the U.S. incursion.

I noticed with interest that, three days after Saddam was found in his spider hole, Qaddafi decided to "give up" his nuclear weapons program.  Not after the fall of Baghdad, or during the year Saddam was in hiding, but immediately following his final capture.  We note that our nuclear folks found Qaddafi's nuclear program "remarkably far along toward completion"... and again, the liberal press did not appear to have the intelligence to ask one simple question:  How did a small country with only 6 million population and no industrial base other than oil being operated by foreign nationals manage to develop a sophisticated nuclear weapons program?

The answer to that question becomes obvious when we note that Qaddafi had some 20,000 Iraqi nuclear scientists and technicians working on "his" program in Libya , and they were busy hollowing out a small mountain to house the secret  bomb making program.  It then became clear that Qaddafi's nuclear program was in fact Saddam Husseins nuclear program... so much for the nonsense that there were "no weapons of mass destruction".

The next dot came when we noticed that one of Saddam's wives paid a visit to Mauritania, a 95% Muslim country with strong ties to Iraq.  Why Mauritania?  If you arc a compass line from the U.S. to north Africa, you will note that Mauritania is the shortest distance from the U.S. to a point across the pond.  What was Mrs. Hussein discussing with the Mauritanians?  Missile bases.

Next, we note that Saddam was developing a longer range Scud missile, capable of reaching the U.S. from a missile base in Mauritania.  It finally all came together:

1.  Saddam was well along the path to developing a working nuclear weapon.

2.  Saddam had a long range Scud capable of reaching the U.S. from Mauritania, and

3.  Saddam was just crazy enough to use it after the pieces all came together.

So, Mr. President, I want you to know there is at least one member of Mensa smart enough to connect all of these dots, and I apologize if I have revealed anything that is still classified by our government. 

Thus, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and apologize for the ignorance of the liberal press and the host of liberal pundits who have demeaned you for so many years.  You were one smart president ( yes, I know you had a higher I.Q. than John Kerry, because back in your day military tests were intelligence based and you had higher military test scores than Kerry and thus were the smarter of the pair ).

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for stopping Saddam Hussein, arguably the greatest threat to the U.S. in the past half-century.

I'll end this tome by noting that we are not exactly total strangers.  My Dad was an executive with the Superior Oil Company of California, and headed up the Midland Texas land office.  We also were members of the Midland Country Club, and attended the same church.  My mom told me she used to work with your mom on a project called "Casa de Amigos"... a program which taught Mexican women how to sew.

Thanks for your service,

James A. Peden
Shoreham, Vermont