“I believe it is peace for our time.” — Neville Chamberlain, after meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich, 1938.

With all of the problems in Iraq lately, I thought I would write a piece detailing why we should stay in Iraq. The reasons are numerous — if we didn’t, Iraq would be fraught with terrorists and training camps, and the group that emerges victorious would use violence to tyrannize the people of Iraq.

There are other reasons of course — stability in the region, showing the world the words “radical” and “Islam” need not always be in the same sentence; the spread of political and economic freedom needed to rid the world of terrorism. But most reasonable people understand all of that.

I think what is needed now is a reminder of just why we got ourselves into this.

The quote above is a large reason. Bill Clinton said it when he said the United States could “no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades U.N. inspections.”

As to the point of whether Saddam actually had weapons of mass destruction; the consensus is no, but according to the interim report a few months ago by David Kay, here is what Iraq did have:

* A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to U.N. monitoring and suitable for continuing conventional biological weapons research.

* A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of biological weapon agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the United Nations.

* Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist’s home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

* New research on biological weapon-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the United Nations.

That is merely the most damning evidence that doesn’t include the fleet of UAV’s as a delivery vehicle, missiles that were over the U.N.-sanctioned limit, an effort to get missiles from North Korea, a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced and documents from the Saddam regime saying that chemical weapons could be produced in as little as two months.

These little tidbits are merely part of the report — and a part of that report states much of the most damning information was destroyed in the chaos just following Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Also, nobody seems to remember the radio intercepts that Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the United Nations.

The problem was not that the inspections forced Iraq to stop WMD activities, but merely made them go more underground.

The other argument concerned ties to terrorism.

Well, if we went into Afghanistan to destroy terrorist camps, it would be noted that we destroyed a terrorist camp just south of Baghdad called Salman Pak. U.N. inspectors looking for WMD found Salman Pak.

It had a Boeing 707 in the camp, but no runway. Defectors confirm that terrorists trained for hijackings at this camp.

Two dozen al-Qaida members were captured early in the actual war — meaning they were there before the war started.

There has been a record of payments, meetings, an al-Qaida cell called Ansar Al-Islam (Saddam had no control over them, but there was cooperation to fight the Kurds using them). This was not “hyped” or “forced” evidence.

That was just going over Clinton-era intelligence and cross-referencing it with the new prisoners from Afghanistan or Iraq.

There is much more to this story than what is being told in the press, but whenever something negative happens in Iraq, just remember why we are there, and why we should stay there.

No one said this would be easy, and America has always stepped up to the plate — we shouldn’t back out now.

Louis Kishkunas is a sophomore in political science from Glenwood. He is president of the ISU College Republicans.