Molly Ivins
Bush still has a whole lot of convincing to do
Thu Feb 12 14:32:04 2004
64.140.158.70

Bush still has a whole lot of convincing to do
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0402120369feb12,1,7966558.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed

Many still find the president’s revised arguments for going to war with Iraq lacking

Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate. 02/12/04

AUSTIN, Texas—Just for the record, since the record is in considerable peril. These are Orwellian days, my friends, as the Bush administration attempts to either shove the history of the second gulf war down the memory hole or to rewrite it entirely. Keeping a firm grip on actual historical fact, all of it easily within our imperfect memories, is not that easy amid the swirling storms of misinformation, misremembering and misstatement. But since the war itself stands as a monument to what happens when we let ourselves get stampeded by a chorus of disinformation, let’s draw the line right now.

According to the 500-man American team that spent hundreds of millions of dollars looking for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, there aren’t any and have not been any since 1991.

President Bush and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, now claim Saddam Hussein provoked this war by refusing to allow United Nations weapons inspectors into his country. That is not true. Bush said Sunday on NBC’s "Meet the Press": "I had no choice when I looked at the intelligence. ... The evidence we have discovered this far says we had no choice."

No, it doesn’t. Last week, CIA director George Tenet said intelligence analysts never told the White House "that Iraq posed an imminent threat."

Let’s start with the absurd quibble over the word "imminent." The word was, in fact, used by three administration spokesmen to describe the Iraqi threat, while Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld variously described it as "immediate," "urgent," "serious and growing," "terrible," "real and dangerous," "significant," "grave," "serious and mounting," "the unique and urgent threat," "no question of the threat," "most dangerous threat of our time," "a threat of unique urgency," "much graver than anybody could possibly have imagined" and so forth and so on. So could we can that issue?

A second emerging thesis of defense by the administration in light of no weapons is, as former chief weapons inspector David Kay said, "We were all wrong."

No, in fact, we weren’t all wrong.

Bush said Sunday, "The international community thought he [Hussein] had weapons." Actually, the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly told the Bush administration there was no evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Before the war, Rumsfeld not only claimed Iraq had such weapons but that "we know where they are." UN inspectors began openly complaining that U.S. tips on the weapons were "garbage upon garbage." Hans Blix, the former head of the UN weapons inspections team, had 250 inspectors from 60 nations on the ground in Iraq, and the United States thwarted efforts to double the size of his team. You may recall that during this period, the administration repeatedly dismissed the United Nations as incompetent and irrelevant.

But containment had worked.

Nor does the "everybody thought they had WMD" argument wash on the domestic front. Perhaps the administration thought peaceniks could be ignored, but you will recall that this was a war opposed by an extraordinary number of generals. Among them, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, a former commander of the U.S. Central Command, who has extensive experience in the Middle East, who said, "We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started." After listening to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz at a conference, Zinni said, "In other words, we are going to go to war over another intelligence failure." Give that man the Cassandra Award for being right in depressing circumstances.

Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan was equally blunt. Any serving general who got out of line, like Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, was openly dissed by the administration.

Suddenly, the administration is left with the only good reason there ever was for getting rid of Saddam Hussein in the first place—he’s a miserable s.o.b. You will recall that this is precisely the argument the administration rejected. Wolfowitz said that human rights violations by Hussein against his own people were not sufficient to justify our participation in his ouster.

Now, according to the president, Hussein is a "madman." For everyone who ever cared about human rights and longed for years to get rid of Saddam Hussein, this late-breaking humanitarianism on Bush’s part is actually nauseating. All the Amnesty International types who risked their lives to report just how terrible Hussein’s rule was always had one question about getting rid of him: What comes next?

I don’t think there is any great mystery here about how this "mistake"—such an inadequate word—was made. For those seriously addicted to tragic irony, consider that the most likely Democratic presidential nominee is now John Kerry, who first became known 33 years ago for asking, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
==============================================

Congrats people! You did it again!

As you might remember, Bill O'Reilly who swore he would be skeptical of Bush and
his admin if WMD were not found in Iraq. He also swore he would apologize to his
audience for his support of the war and the "president" if the WMD were not found.

Now, he has been forced to live up to his words. :) He has offered said apology. :)
Bush's administration is as good as over when die-hards like Reilly are jumping
ship. I believe Ceaser knew this as "The Ides of March." -Aaron

Excerpt:
--------------
Popular conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly, usually an outspoken
Bush loyalist, said on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration
and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction.

"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be
concerned about this," O'Reilly said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning
America."
--------------


------- Forwarded message follows -------
>From: "Chris D. Blunt"
>To: "'olga666@rattlebrain.com '"
>Subject: O'Reilly Apologized!
>Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 05:35:29 -0800
>
>Several weeks back, someone sent an article about a movement to pressure
>radio hypocrite Bill O'Reilly to stand by his word and apologize if the
>Bush regime could not find WMD in Iraq. Apparently the pressure got to
>him:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040210/pl_nm/campaign_bush_base_dc_1


Bush's Political Base Seems Restive, Anxious
Reuters
Tue Feb 10,12:23 PM ET
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By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some of George W. Bush's conservative political supporters are increasingly restive and anxious about the president's economic policies as well as his attempts to justify the war against Iraq (news - web sites).

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Election 2004



Popular conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly, usually an outspoken Bush loyalist, said on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this," O'Reilly said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America."

Pollster John Zogby said Bush was on the defensive with some polls showing him slightly behind Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), his probable Democratic opponent in the Nov. 2 presidential election.

"The president is on the ropes right now. The question is, how will he adjust? Right now, the issues are not in his favor. Many Americans still think the economy is poor and his rationale for the Iraq war seems a little thin," he said.

"Bush's greatest asset was his unimpeachable integrity in the eyes of most Americans. But with no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that integrity has been chipped away and right now some large lumps are falling off it," Zogby said.

Bush's White House interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday was designed to calm some of these doubts. But while some pundits gave Bush good marks for his performance, some prominent conservatives were not impressed.

'TIRED AND UNSURE'

Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for former President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) and for Bush's father and an outspoken conservative commentator, said: "The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse. He seemed in some way disconnected from the event."

Conservative columnists George Will and Robert Novak and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, now a cable TV commentator, have also recently criticized Bush's fiscal programs and his attempts to explain them.

Such doubts, if they persist, could spell trouble for Bush's re-election campaign. But conservative political consultant Keith Appell said Bush would soon be able to unify and energize his base.

"The White House has had a string of misfires but I believe they will soon regain their stride. This last month has been a wake-up call, but maybe that's what they needed," he said.

In the past month, Bush's State of the Union Address and his initiative to send manned spacecraft to Mars failed to generate much enthusiasm. Conservatives and liberals both criticized his budget for failing to seriously confront the country's growing deficit problem.

On Monday, Bush delivered an economic report to Congress promising to create 2.6 million jobs this year. Last year's economic report predicted that 1.7 million jobs would be created. Instead, there was a net loss of 53,000.

"Congress has the power to censure the president -- to formally reprimand him for betraying the nation's trust. If ever there was a time for this, it's now," the group said in a statement posted on its Web site.

Democrats hope they can plant seeds of doubt now. "If you can create a drumbeat of criticism in February, it's easier to make the case when it really counts in September and October," said Democratic consultant Jennifer Laszlo.

But Brown University political scientist Darrell West said he expected Bush to recover. "It's damaging when your friends criticize you in public, but by November they will all be supporting Bush," he said.

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