While most liberal Democrat lawmakers and presidential candidates along with the mainstream press have been blasting President Bush for failing to find the supposed "smoking gun" -- weapons of mass destruction -- there is plenty of evidence that our war with Iraq to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and liberate the Iraqi people was the right thing to do.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media has once again shown its blatant bias against President Bush and the United States of America by not reporting on something extremely disturbing that was found by U.N. weapons inspectors five years ago and then again by coalition forces in Northeast Baghdad towards the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom at the beginning of April.

Unbelievably, on April 8, 2003 members of the United States Marines discovered a prison for children in the capital of Iraq. When the gates of the prison were unlocked by American troops, over 125 children came running out of bondage like bees in a shaken beehive. The soldiers were completely astonished by the incredibly degrading condition of the imprisoned children, who all looked severely malnourished and barely wearing any clothing at all. I bet you never saw any of these images on CBS, NBC, ABC or CNN!

As shocking as this discovery was, these children seem to have been treated even “better” than many other children over the past ten years in Iraq. The international organization known as the Human Rights Watch has informed the world that the Saddam Hussein regime has summarily imprisoned, tortured and executed children mercilessly since he came to power in the late 1970's. Saddam Hussein repeatedly used children as bargaining chips to make their parents confess to crimes conducted against him. If the parents failed to come before Saddam Hussein, he would continue to imprison or even execute their children in cold blood! Many of these children, who are among the 300,000 "missing" persons in Iraq, are feared dead.

Details were recently released about a former Iraqi secret police agent who was one of the people responsible for torturing the children in Iraq. He admitted to causing pain to children as young as five years old to coerce their mothers to talk. He claims that they never killed the children, but just "beat them with steel cables." However, a story from the BBC contradicts this claim when another Saddam Hussein regime torturer said it was commonplace for the imprisoned children to be killed if their parents refused to talk.

The children that were found by the Marines earlier this month were in prison because they refused to join the youth division of Saddam Hussein's Baath party. "Saddam's Cubs" was created in 1998 and was used to train and indoctrinate young Iraqi children in military warfare and terrorism. After successfully completing training in “Saddam’s Cubs,” many of these youth graduated to what is known as the Fedeyeen Saddam. This paramilitary group has been notorious for carrying out terrorist attacks on dissidents and enemies the Saddam Hussein regime. Many of them did this by sacrificing their lives as suicide bombers on behalf of Saddam Hussein.

Unbelievably, Scott Ritter, former United Nations weapons inspector, first reported the "horrific scene" of prisons for children in Iraq in January 1998 when his team found one of the prisons in Baghdad. Ritter reported that this prison held toddlers to tweens (8-12 years old) and was used to get their parents who opposed the Saddam Hussein regime to come forward. Ritter has refused to elaborate further on what he saw in these prisons because he believed the sights he saw were "so horrible" that they would be "used by those who want to promote war with Iraq."

Well, duh? Would the U.N. Security Council have even blinked for a second about authorizing a war with Iraq if these blatant human rights violations were brought to the forefront? Liberal lawmakers such as Hillary Clinton often use children as a justification for many of their policies on taxes, education and health care. Does anyone think Hillary or President Clinton would have acted on this information if it had become public in 1998? Maybe. Maybe not. But now that these children’s prisons have been discovered, why are liberal Democrats still looking for a “smoking gun?” What else do we need to find in Iraq to justify the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime? Democrats need to lay aside their hatred for President Bush and stand up for what is right for once!

Instead, Ritter believed he was promoting “peace” by remaining silent. I wonder how many nightmares he had about that children’s prison over the past five years?! Did he really think he would be promoting “peace” by NOT telling the world about these awful places he saw?!?!?! That’s the exact same thing as saying that you will refuse to tell the police that there’s a dead body in your back yard. You wouldn't want to accuse any of your neighbors of being involved in murder, you know! After all, you’re promoting the peace by not telling the truth! Does anyone else think that is absolutely insane?! It seems the mainstream liberal press has done the exact same thing in their NON-reporting of this story, which would explain why most Americans don’t even know about these evil acts perpetrated against innocent Iraqi children by Saddam Hussein.

Well, this story has been ignored for far too long! If this was all Saddam Hussein ever did wrong as the leader of Iraq, then it would have been enough evidence for war with Iraq. Unfortunately, I believe we will find something even worse in the coming months that will constitute the "smoking gun" everyone has been looking for. Thankfully, this cruel treatment of children by Saddam Hussein has been extinguished for good. This is one “smoking gun” that has lost its firepower!