RW-(the original) Dancing Madly Backwards Through A Liberal Minefield

Let's examine the three assumptions critics of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy make:

Bush lied about Saddam being a threat. Both the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee and the independent Silberman-Robb Commission found not one case in which Bush officials, quoting the Senate committee, "attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities." Recall that both the French and German intelligence agencies also believed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Just two months before the war, the Los Angeles Times reported that chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix "disclosed troubling new details about Iraq's weapons programs and expressed frustration with what he described as Baghdad's refusal to resolve long-standing questions about efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons, as well as long-range missiles." Mr. Blix later told reporters that in his gut he felt that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. "These guys had played cat-and-mouse during the whole of the '90s, so I was suspicious of that," he told NBC's Tim Russert earlier this month. He later changed his mind when his officials uncovered no evidence of a weapons program. But the question remains: If President Bush lied about Saddam having WMD why did so many others also say the same thing at the time?

Some Democrats still believe Saddam was a threat, WMD or not. Former Nebraska senator and presidential candidate Bob Kerrey, now president of New York's New School, noted earlier this year that newly declassified documents from Saddam Hussein's office concerning a meeting between an Iraq official and Osama bin Laden show that "Saddam was a significant enemy of the United States." One document is a handwritten account of a Feb. 19, 1995, meeting between an official representative of Iraq and bin Laden, where bin Laden broached the idea of "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. The document reports that after Saddam was informed of the meeting he agreed to broadcast sermons of a radical imam, Suleiman al Ouda, requested by bin Laden. Several months later al Qaeda terrorists attacked the headquarters of the Saudi National Guard. The document specifically said the question of future cooperation "between the two parties [is] to be left according to what's open" in the future.

"I personally and strongly believe you don't have to prove that Iraq was collaborating [with] Osama bin Laden on the Sept. 11 attacks to prove he was an enemy and that he would collaborate with people who would do our country harm," Mr. Kerrey told the New York Sun. "This presents facts that should not be used to tie Saddam to attacks on Sept. 11. It does tie him into a circle that meant to damage the United States."

# posted by RW-(the original) : 1:36 PM