Did Bush Lie Us into War?

News at Home

by John Dean

Mr. Dean served as White House counsel under President Richard Nixon. His latest book is: The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court (2002)

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President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMD are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMD is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

President Bush's Statements On Iraq's Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:

United Nations Address, Sept. 12, 2002:

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

Radio Address, Oct. 5, 2002:

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

Cincinnati, Ohio Speech, Oct. 7, 2002:

"The Iraqi regime... possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his"nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

State of the Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003:

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003:

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Should The President Get The Benefit Of The Doubt?

When these statements were made, Bush's let-me-mince-no-words posture was convincing to many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the world, and many other Americans, doubted them.

As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was also being debated on campuses -- including those where I happened to be lecturing at the time.

On several occasions, students asked me the following question: Should they believe the president of the United States? My answer was that they should give the president the benefit of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from the usual procedures that have operated in every modern White House and that, I assumed, had to be operating in the Bush White House, too.

First, I assured the students that these statements had all been carefully considered and crafted. presidential statements are the result of a process, not a moment's thought. White House speechwriters process raw information, and their statements are passed on to senior aides who have both substantive knowledge and political insights. And this all occurs before the statement ever reaches the president for his own review and possible revision.

Second, I explained that -- at least in every White House and administration with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton -- statements with national security implications were the most carefully considered of all. The White House is aware that, in making these statements, the President is speaking not only to the nation, but also to the world.

Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically corrected rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this case, far from backpedaling from the president's more extreme claims, Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than the president had. For example, on Jan. 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing,"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

In addition, others in the administration were similarly quick to back the president up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had WMD -- and even went so far as to claim he knew"where they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't have solid intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not stick their necks out only to have them chopped off by political opponents on an issue as important as this, and if there were any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact, he would say:"I have been advised," or"our intelligence reports strongly suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.

So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?

After all, no WMD have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find -- for they existed in large quantities,"thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could testify and production equipment also existed.

So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?

There are two main possibilities. One, that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the President has deliberately misled the nation, and the world.

A Desperate Search For WMD Has So Far Yielded Little, If Any, Fruit

Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the president had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search for WMD, which he knew would provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were found.

Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward Baghdad, the search for WMD continued. None were found.

As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and countryside, special search teams were dispatched to look for WMD. None were found.

During the past two-and-a-half months, according to reliable news reports, military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited weapons were found there.

British And American Press Reaction To The Missing WMD

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in England, which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the missing WMD. In Britain, the missing WMD are being treated as scandalous; so far, the reaction in the United States has been milder.

The New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to task, asserting that it is"long past time for this administration to be held accountable.""The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat," Krugman argued."If that claim was fraudulent," he continued,"the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history -- worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-Contra." But most media outlets have reserved judgment as the search for WMD in Iraq continues.

Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the Pentagon announced it was shifting its search from looking for WMD sites to looking for people who can provide leads as to where the missing WMD might be.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that WMD will indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the Iraq Survey Group, composed of some 1,400 experts and technicians from around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.

But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According to Time, the Marine general in charge explained that"[w]e've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad," and remarked flatly,"They're simply not there."

Perhaps most troubling, the president has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently, misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?

The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the president's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies.

Investigating The Iraqi War Intelligence Reports

Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional misconduct occurred, the president has a serious credibility problem. Newsweek magazine posed the key questions:"If America has entered a new age of preemption -- when it must strike first because it cannot afford to find out later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological weapons -- exact intelligence is critical. How will the United States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure where they are? And how will Bush be able to maintain support at home and abroad?"

In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O. J. looking for his wife's killer. But there may be a difference: Unless the members of the administration can find someone else to blame -- informants, surveillance technology, lower-level personnel, you name it -- they may not escape fault themselves.

Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war intelligence collection and evaluation. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the situation. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation.

These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent evidence of either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct -- and either would be a serious problem. When the best case scenario seems to be mere incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) -- a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee - told CNN's Aaron Brown that while he still hopes they find WMD or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three other possible alternative scenarios:

One is that [the WMD] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.

Sen. Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN"there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Sen. Graham requested that the Bush administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed"findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the administration, by cherrypicking evidence only to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decisionmaking process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggests manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said:"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that"[t]he country swims on a sea of oil."

Worse Than Watergate? A Potential Huge Scandal If WMD Are Still Missing

Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

This administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, it was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be"a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony"to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a president to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

This article was first published in FindLaw.com and is reprinted with permission.

comments powered by Disqus

"Sites that intelligence had estimated were WMD affiliated. I suspect they didn't anticpate having to check every Ali or Akbar's garage, either."

Yes, for the dreaded Trailers of Mass Destruction:

http://www.nypress.com/16/23/news&columns;/signorile.cfm

Jerry West - 6/23/2003

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As an aside to all of the economic gibberish flying back and forth, I thought that this article might be amusing:

http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,982271,00.html

Jerry West - 6/23/2003

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NYGuy wrote:

....one could reason that "if", "a big if, the leader of the DNC has no ideas and only criticizes this country then one could conclude that the Democrats "Hate America."

JW:

One could, but it is not very good reasoning. One could extrapolate from this that those who criticized Clinton and his administration also hated America. A related fantasy.

Demonizing those one disagrees with is a cheap rhetorical tool when solid arguments won't do the trick. Kind of like putting on a white sheet and pillow case. :)

I doubt if there are very many people on either side of the debate who hate America, though I don't doubt many disagree with policies of one kind or another, and may not think too fondly of some of the people behind those policies.

NYG:

He said when I make a mistake I apologize.

JW:

Some criticism. We would be better off if everyone had this philosphy. Much preferable to someone who digs in and refuses to admit that they made a mistake and continues to compound it. Example exist across the political spectrum.

NYG:

He was also questioned on his Vietnam deferment after which he went skiing for 80 day on some difficult bumpy mountains.

JW:

And the point is? Are we comparing military service of our leaders here? I can think of a bunch of cowards who dodged the Vietnam War currently now responsible for sending good solidiers off to die for no good purpose. Disgusting.

NYG:

....get out the vote for the Democrats.

JW:

You don't have to worry about that, they are no better than the Republicans. :)

NYGuy - 6/22/2003

Terry McAuliff, Chairman of the DNC delivered the Democrats negative, bankrupt message on the CBS Morning Show this morning. During an approximately 20 minute discussion McAuliff was unable to say anything positive and failed to articulate any new ideas except those that were increasing more negative than before.

Base on the the type of analysis presented by Krugman and Dean one could reason that "if", "a big if, the leader of the DNC has no ideas and only criticizes this country then one could conclude that the Democrats "Hate America."

Meanwhile Dean was on NBC apologizing for the many misrepresentation statements that he made. He said when I make a mistake I apologize. He was also questioned on his Vietnam deferment after which he went skiing for 80 day on some difficult bumpy mountains. Like McAuliff he had nothing positive to add, and although he says he made a lot of mistakes he is willing to apologize. Do we want to turn the world over to another apologist?

Look, if you want to take down this country, which many on this board want to do, get out the vote for the Democrats. That is if you favor a party with no positive ideas, no programs and no lealders, but are stand up guy who aren't afraid to apologize.

NYGuy - 6/22/2003

Don William’s attempt to discuss the deficit was basically meaningless and very similar to my story of Babe Ruth’s strikeouts. Don only produced a bunch of numbers but did not benchmark, nor frame them for further analysis. As any one who has analyzed economic data knows the very minimum effort one should use is to analyze Debt as a percentage of the economy such as GDP or GNP. Then he has to forecast what percentage debt will be of the economy over the next few years, and how these percentages compare with historical values.

As for Keynes I may not have made myself clear. I only mentioned his name once when I suggested that Don might want to understand deficit spending and the economy since Keynes was a pioneer in this field, and thought he should start with his theories.

Keynes ideas were popularize after WWII by the Harvard economists and Reich and many other economists still use his ideas. Obviously the theory was not perfect and others have build on it over the past 50 years. We also have other economic theories such as the Chicago School as well as one in which wealth should be redistribution. This latter one, however, is a bankrupt theory, which has failed miserably, and there is no need to discuss it here, even though many historians and others still believe it.

Jerry cites the Chicago School and Friedman’s Neo-Classical Theory, which deals primarily with controlling the money supply to control inflation as well as his ideas on the Philip’s Curve and limited government intervention since the economy will tend to full employment. This does not contradict anything I said, or impact or affect the weakness of Don’s post.

Reich, from a Keynesian point of view has no problems with debt levels and deficits and writes:

“Yet not until the U.S. entered World War II did F.D.R. try Keynes' idea on a scale necessary to pull the nation out of the doldrums--and Roosevelt, of course, had little choice. The big surprise was just how productive America could be when given the chance. Between 1939 and 1944 (the peak of wartime production), the nation's output almost doubled, and unemployment plummeted--from more than 17% to just over 1%.”

Do you or Don know what the percentage debt was to our economy in 1944 as compared to what the projected numbers are for the deficits over the next five years? Until Don produces this information he cannot come to a meaningful economic conclusion.

Don and you believe that it is extremely unlikely that enough growth could occur to make up the increased burden of debt Bush has added. How do you come to this conclusion without showing what your projections for economic growth are. What about Reich’s comments of how the nation’s output almost doubled from 1939 to 1944 following a period of high debt levels?

As for tax cuts stimulating the economy Reich quotes tax cuts during Johnson’s administration, which stimulated the economy, and others have cited the benefits on the economy of Kennedy’s tax cut.

But, we must look forward and GW is doing a great job of pulling us out of the recession Clinton failed to prevent and dumped into his lap two months after he took office. Six months later GW had to deal with 9/11, which put the U. S. in a state of war. During wartime deficits do increase but no one is expecting our deficits to reach the same percentage of our economy as they did in WWII.

A very important factor in our bottoming out is GW’s leadership which has restored the confidence of investors and the American people, and enable the stock market to rise sharply this year. This has greatly increased the “wealth effect” which is another important stimulant for economic growth and as we discussed tax cuts is a further economic stimulant.

Thus I believe the economy is now bottoming out and we are at the beginning of a major economic boom.

In conclusion, because of poor analysis, Don’s posting of debt levels in my opinion was meaningless and has not added anything to this discussion.

Hepatitus - 6/21/2003

You've got yourself all confused. keynes favored deficits as part of his general program of interventionist, "progressive" gvernment. Keynes believed in running short term deicits to stimulate economic growth. He advocated social programs which put money in the hands of ordinary consumers. This had the advantage of redistributing income towards the less wealthy and also stimulating the economy. He was not at all opposed to big government--it's not unreasonable, in many ways, to say that keynes is the father of liberal "big government," which is why Robert Reich likes him so much. Keynes never advocated permanent deficits: rather he argued that deficit spending was one of a set of tolls the government could use to manage the economy and the distribution of wealth. he never argued for huge deficits: he argued against the orthodoxy of the times, which was that deficits were ALWAYS bad. he never argued for tax cuts--he favored, as I said, progressive taxation, which taxes the rich more heavily than the poor. Keynes felt about deficits the way he felt about inflation--in managed, controlled doses, both could be good for the economy. if either got out of control, disaster.

Here's the difference with Bush--why he is not a Keynsian, and why invoking Kaynes in a discissuion of Bush's deficit is odd.

Bush is creating the deficit not by new social spending, but by cutting taxes.This reduces the government's power to act in the economy. Bush's tax cuts have dramatically inflated the deficit--staggeringly, really--while also shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor. This is Don's point. Bush is actively opposed, and has been his whole career, to the kind of liberal social spending which Keynes inspired. He has also established a deficit which we cannot grow our way out of, and which will require us to cut major social entitlements--like medicare and social security--by 2020 or earlier.

The defense of bush's deficit is that if you put money in the hands of the rich, they will go out and create new enterprises which the poor will benefit from. the economy will grow, and govt. revenues will increase. Don's citations point out that it it is extrenely unlikely that enough growth could occur to make up the increased burden of debt Bush has created. The compensation ordinary taxpayers get from Bush's cuts--a few hundred dollars--will not even come close to offsetting the costs they will have to pay in terms of service cuts--decreased funding for education,. for roads, for health care, for police and security, for job training, for prisons and law enforcement, for parks, not to mention social security and medicare

As for me, I am much closer to Keynes--I dont' think deficits are always bad, and I think they can be used by the government to stimulate econominc growth. But a runaway, reckless deficit like Bush has established is going to have long term harmful efffects--it's going to gut the social safety net that many Americans believe in and count on. In 10 years, Social security will be bankrupt because of the deficits, and conservatives will say "see, we told you big government doesn't work. We need too eliminate these prigrams becaseu we can't afford them." Thisis not a secret--it's been part of the conservative aganda for a while now--starve the government by running deficits, and then use the excus of deficits to cut social programs

The point of this thread, however, was alwasy Bush's mendacity. A i said before, it seems clear to me that bush lied about the WMD's his reckless economic policy is another matter

Saddam is out of power--good
There appear to have been no WMDs--good

The point is that the Bush admin lied to the public--it justified a pre-emptive strike on the basis of a genuine threa to the US. To date, no credible evidence of such a threat has appeared. Much of the Administration's evidnce has ben show to be either sketchy or false. for example, the forged Nigerian uranium documents. Does it mean nothing to you that the sole evidence of this allegeded nuclear program was a single forged document? If there was more evidence, WHERE IS IT?. Similarly, the two trailers which Bush claimed were for production of WMDs--take a look at this link from the Observer: http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,977853,00.html. Or here's an excerpt.:

"Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds
Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday June 15, 2003
The Observer

An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.

The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.

Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'

Now maybe this means nothing to you--maybe in your view it is fine if the government deliberately spreads misinformation, putting American soldiers lives at risk, getting Americans killed, in order to advance its agenda. The government might, for example, use forged documents to prove that isreal was a threat to the US, and justify, say, a cut in foreign aid to isreal, and tose of us who find israel's actions troublin would be pplease, and that would be fine, according to your logic. How would you like that, Elia? would that be ok?

Those of us who were against the war argued that the case for WMDs was not conclusively proven (we were right!) and that we should allow more time for inspections, even militarized inspections, rather than plunging into war. We did not "achieve" disarmament, becasue it turns out, there never were the WMDs. Saddam apparently claimed he had them, in order to bolster his power. Inspections could have reveled this--hey, they DID reveal it. We just didn't listen

This war was ill-concieved, based on duplicity and willfull misrepresentation. If Saddam is dead, great. he was aa creep. But Bush's actions are grounds for impeachment

Elia Markell - 6/17/2003

Kriz certainly gives us the goods on Poppy. I actually read the article he links to. Defy anyone to find one verifiable fact in it. "Anonymous sources," "whispers about dalliances," "a lot of gossip," "no evidence to substantiate it." Wend your way through that verbiage, if you care to, and see what you can find.

In any case, who cares?

What is absolutely classic and delightful, however, is this quintessence of Salem-1692 from Mr.Kriz:

"The reason you have not 'heard [sic] any credible evidence' of Poppy's cheating is exactly my point."

The Queen of Hearts could not have said it better.

Elia Markell - 6/17/2003

Absolutely nothing, NOTHING, in this article indicates Bush lied about WMD in any way at all. The best Mr. Dean can do after all his huffing and puffing is this ...

"After all, no WMD have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find -- for they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone."

Gee. What a scandal!

First, as for the thousands of tons, it's interesting that, isn't it. That measure did NOT come from George W. Bush. It came from UNSCOM. And Bill Clinton was far more specific on the amounts and types in 1998, when like W he was prepared to go to war because of them.

Here's the problem with the gotcha breathlessness of Mr. Dean and all his pathetic clones. Nowhere does Mr. Dean offer a plausible explanation of why Saddam, having this stuff -- according to both the UN and the US and everyone else, absolutely unequivocally -- while inspections were going on, should then have destroyed it, once the inspectors were out, post-1998. And even more absurd, that he should have destroyed it yet not allowed any independent verification of that fact, at a loss in a hundred billion dollars in oil revenue and ultimately his regime (if not his life). In any case, hiding "thousands of tons" of what is largely dual use material anyway is not that hard, Mr. Dean.

The left, having made a fool of itself on every other point regarding the war, is now in the process of making the mother of all fools of itself over this. Most Americans think in terms of actual consequences, not intentions -- unlike the left itself. Hence their shrugging disdain about all this is as if to say, "so, you think it would be better if Saddam were still burying babies with their dolls?" (I know the left's real answer to this, but doubt we will every hear it spoken in public -- talking about lies).

What we know about the WMD issue is this: Sometime between 1998 and now, Saddam had WMD and every nation and every national intelligence service on earth was ABSOLUTELY sure of this. Now he does NOT have WMD. Only those besotted by hatred for W see this as a sign of the failure, rather than of the smashing success, of our policy. Some combination of sanctions (which the left hated), inspections (which the left opposed until Sept 2002, when the alternative to them became Iraqi liberation), the credible build up of forces in the six months leading to war, or the war itself, resulted in Saddam's DISARMAMENT -- the ostensible objective of all the supposedly peace loving people of the earth, until it actually happened, that is. DISARMAMENT was the objective. Objective achieved. Hooray.

Stephen Kriz - 6/16/2003

Mr. Guiscard:

The reason you have not "heard [sic] any credible evidence" of Poppy's cheating is exactly my point - Democrats get smeared by the conservative-controlled media, while Republicans get away with murder - literally.

Here is a link for you to contemplate:

http://www.cjr.org/year/92/6/jennifer.asp

Bush's affair with Fitzgerald was well-known in Washington for years. She was an aide to Bush, a "distinctly unequal position", as you put it. He even took her to China with him (possibly to work on the Kama Sutra?) when Bush served as envoy to China in the 1970's. Bar stayed home with thier miscreant sons. As far as a CEO getting fired for dalliances with women many years their junior, ask Jack Welch, GE's former CEO, how badly his affair with a younger woman damaged his career. Not a bit, as I read it. That hardly excuses Clinton. I, for one, do not cheat on my wife nor do I admire men who do. But, don't kid yourself that Clinton would have been punished more, had he been a chief executive in the private sector. I highly doubt it.

On a related matter (although they really aren't related), Clinton may well have believed Saddam had WMDs, but I don't recall that he launched a preemptive war and got 150 brave soldiers (and still counting) killed in the process. Did I miss something? This a-hole Bush, has made a mockery of the Constitution and richly deserves impeachment!

Peace is the only answer.

Steve Kriz

Robert Guiscard - 6/16/2003

Stephen,
First I have not heard any credible proof of an Bush affair. Secondly and more importantly, the issues with Clinton' affair was not just extramarital sex. He had an affair with an intern, an disctinctly unequal relationship. IF Clinton had worked at a College or a any major corporation, this affair would have had him fired for cause. Then Clinton compounds his error by lying under oath, which caused him to be disbared from practising law in Arkansas.

On another related topic, the Clinton White House also believed that Iraq had a credible Weapons of Mass Destruction Program. Bush Jr. may have acted on this belief but by no means was the belief unique to him.

Stephen Kriz - 6/16/2003

Mr. Dean is absolutely on target. Bush lied us into the Iraqi war and there are thousands of dead human beings as a result.

However, since there is a double standard for Republicans, nothing will happen to Bush. Just like his father's long-running extramarital affair with Jennifer Fitzgerald was kept secret by the media, while Bill Clinton was villified for having an affair, Bush will get away with serial lying. There is no longer an independent media to hold him accountable. The days of this Republic are numbered. We are watching the beginning of the end of the United States....

Hepatitus - 6/16/2003

Bush may not have know he was lying--he may have actually believed what he was told. I assume at some point this will be his defense, and someone in the administration will be made to take the fall so e that Bush can run for anotehr term. But the point is, the Bush adninistration systimatically and deliberately oversold the threat. It wanged a preamptive strike against a country that appears to have had no power to strike the US. Zealots in the administration either cooked the intelligence findings or ignored contrary information. They put American lives at risk on the basis of false, misleading and incomplete information. If that's not a scandal, I don't know what is.

Herodotus - 6/16/2003

Dean says:
"Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the president had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search for WMD, which he knew would provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were found."

Except...the United States did not "formally declare war" against Iraq. Congress did not pass a declaration of war; it passed a resolution allowing the President to use force. There is a tremendous difference between the two. I suspect Mr. Dean, as a lawyer, was simply careless rather than being deliberate. His argument is thorough, to his credit.