Bush shot back a few hours later at a campaign rally in Wisconsin. Bush
quoted Kerry, who wondered aloud in a speech two years ago whether
Saddam Hussein might invade allies in the region or let the weapons of mass
destruction he was suspected of possessing slide off to one group or
another in a region where weapons are the currency or the trade.
Now today, my opponent tries to say I made up reasons to go to
war, Bush told cheering supporters at an outdoor rally. Just who’s
the one trying to mislead the American people?
You are, dummy.
John Kerry’s faults are many–and that’s especially true on assault on Iraq. But speculating about a dangerous possibility is different from asserting that it is actually so. Thus, Kerry favored inspections to determine whether or not this possibility was the case–backed by the threat of military force. That was a stupid-ass position, but not nearly as stupid-ass a position as the one held by Mr. Bush–who proclaimed as fact, in front of God and everybody, that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed biological and chemical weapons, was in the process of developing nuclear weapons, and posed a grave and gathering threat to the people of the United States, and so decided to force an end to inspections for no reason whatsoever (other than the time-table of his war planners).
Kerry damn well should have known better from the start. So much the worse for him, but in light of new evidence he’s admitted that he made a mistake about Iraq. Bush, on the other hand, intends to show us how resolute a Commander-in-Chief he is by insisting that it just doesn’t matter whether or not he told a bunch of lies, and that America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison.
Just in case you were wondering, it’s official. George W. Bush looked us in the eye and he told us a bunch of damned lies. Colin Powell stood up in front of the United Nations and told a bunch of damned lies. Dick Cheney has told lie after lie in front of everyone.
Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, told Congress
today that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stocks of chemical and biological
weapons and agents in 1991 and 1992 and that his nuclear weapons program
had decayed to almost nothing by 2003.
Duelfer, a former U.N. inspector and the personal representative of the CIA
director, said the former Iraqi dictator had intentions to restart his program,
but after weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, Hussein instead focused his
attention on ending the sanctions imposed by Western governments following
his incursion into Kuwait and the Persian Gulf war of 1991.
Thanks to the lie, more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been murdered, and more than 1,000 American soldiers have been sent to their deaths in order to conquer a foreign country that posed no threat whatsoever to people in the United States. Messrs. Bush and Cheney have responded by saying, Well, it’s the thought that counts:
The White House has responded that the Iraqi leader had an intent to restart
his programs, some of which he could do quickly, and that he was working on
developing prohibited missiles that, if armed with chemical or biological
agents, would threaten the region.
So Saddam Hussein didn’t pose a threat, but hey, he thought that maybe some day he might want to start working towards pose a threat… to somebody or another in the region.
Mr. Bush also likes to point out that the intelligence he had before the war looked like a good reason for invading at the time. Now, that’s a damned lie, but set that aside for the moment. Suppose you did make such a monstrous mistake and killed so many people over something that turned out not to be true, after all? Would you have a good laugh about it at press events? Would you keep on stumping for re-election on your choice to invade a country over claims that turned out to be completely false?
What kind of man can look at the more than 11,000 deaths, with more casualties coming in every goddamned day, find out that the reasons he gave to justify the war were completely specious, and then just say Oops, my bad?
One of the favorite satirical devices of Karl Kraus, an acerbic critic writing in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was to simply print verbatim quotes from prominent Viennese figures, without any additional commentary. Sadly, the tactic has only become more necessary since the end of the Great War–particularly within the discursive world of televised debate.
While inspectors in Iraq continue searching for weapons of mass destruction, some Americans are outraged at the president that so far no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Our next guest thinks that’s grounds for impeachment.
We’re joined by the publisher of Harper’s magazine, John MacArthur, who’s with us. And the author of the best selling book, Treason, Ann Coulter is with us.
It’s not even really intellectually worth discussing. After reading your article, my first reaction is to bubble and fizz and get mad. My second reaction is this is beyond silly, you know, but you really believe this?
Why do you invite me to go on the show if you think it’s beyond discussion?
Because Alan wanted you on. That’s why.
OK. But clearly…
It wasn’t my first choice.
Clearly, if the president of the United States has lied on a grand scale to Congress…
Name me one lie. Name me one lie.
Let me finish.
If you’re going to call him a liar, back it
up.
I will, yes. I’ll talk about what he said
to Bush…Blair at the press conference on September 7 at Camp
David. He said…he cited a non-existent report from the
International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that Saddam was six
months away from developing a nuclear weapon and infamously said,
What more evidence do we need? And from there…
We don’t have time for a speech.
… we moved on to aluminum tubes. We
moved on to connections with Al Qaeda.
Did you call…
We talked about an atomic bomb threat
that did not exist. Sean, this didn’t exist. This didn’t exist.
This isn’t a speech time.
You need me to give you the facts.
I’ve got to ask you, did you call for the
impeachment of Bill Clinton?
I wasn’t interested in the impeachment of
Bill Clinton.
You weren’t interested? So you’re only
interested in the impeachment of Republicans?
No, no, no, no. I mean, it’s…Listen, I
can’t stand Bill Clinton.
Did Bill Clinton lie to the American
people?
Yes.
Why do you have one standard for him and
another standard for a Republican?
I have the same standard for both of
them.
No, you don’t. Because you didn’t write an
article asking for his impeachment.
Actually, what I’m trying to tell you is
that if you, as Senator Graham put it a few months ago very
intelligently, if you apply the same standard to Bush that was
applied to Clinton, then it’s impeachable. He should be impeached.
Absolutely.
Ann…
Because as Alexander Hamilton said in
The Federalist Papers, this has to do with the
immediate consequences and harm done to society. What could be
greater harm than the deaths of American soldiers…
Excuse me. The immediate
consequences…Sir, you have yet to…
… in Iraq, who have been sent to Iraq
on a fraudulent pretext, utterly…
My patience is really running thin.
… and they’re dying.
Could you please be quiet, because there
are other people on the panel?
OK. Sure.
The idea here, he cannot give a specific
example.
I did give a specific example.
He’s full of crap.
I did give an example.
And this is just, hatred of George W. Bush
now has become a sport for these guys.
Ann Coulter?
First of
all, I agree with you. I hate to treat this seriously by
responding, but the particular lie that he cited as his leading,
case in chief of the president lying, yes, Bush cited something
like the Atomic Energy Commission. He misspoke.
Right.
It was the International Institute for
Strategic Studies or something. He misspoke about the name of the
institute.
No, he didn’t. He didn’t.
It’s my turn now. You stop that.
OK.
Point two, as you know, I’m something of an
authority on the grounds for impeachment. And this is precisely the
sort of thing that impeachment is not for. I mean, it’s not for
policy disagreements. It’s certainly not for something that is in
the president’s prerogative, such as waging war, for example.
To take a decision that I think is appalling, but is not grounds
for impeachment. Bill Clinton sending a small Cuban boy back to a
Bolshevik monster in Cuba. That is not grounds for impeachment,
because that is part of the president’s authority.
Ann…
You don’t impeach for disagreements over
policy. It is for misbehavior; that is what misdemeanor means. It’s
for bad decorum.
Ann, we didn’t let Rick make a speech. You
can’t make a speech, either.
Well, actually, you did.
I know it’s hard, but if you look to your
left, I know that’s difficult.
Look, I don’t think he should be impeached. I disagree with Rick
about that.
That’s very big of you.
Thank you. I think I’d rather put our time
and effort toward 2004, and just like I don’t think Bill Clinton
should have been impeached, I don’t.
But I understand Rick’s point. There are many Americans who
increasingly seem to feel that we were not leveled with, for
whatever reason, whether it was Bush who did it or people in his
administration who gave him false information.
He did say the IAEA reported that Iraq was six months away from a
nuclear capability, which turned out not to be true. It’s a scare
tactic.
He got the name of the institute wrong.
Saying I misspoke, and they said they
misspoke about a number of things. Misspoke about uranium. They
misspoke about tubes, misspoke about how many things.
Right.
Misspoke lets him off the hook?
No. Liberals don’t want to fight terrorism.
You want there to be lots of 9/11’s.
In a recent letter to the editor of The Plainsman, Jonathan Melville took a rather odd tack in his support for war against Iraq:
As for the argument that Iraq doesn’t pose a threat to us, this statement is completely irrelevant with respect to whether we wage war.
Mr. Melville may not believe that it is relevant whether the United States is unleashing its deadly military might in an act of self-defense or in an act of unprovoked conquest. This is, however, an odd position to take, and requires some explanation. Unfortunately, nowhere in his letter does Mr. Melville support his claim that the United States can be justified in waging wars based on aggression rather than self-defense. Nor does he provide any principle which he thinks is relevant to whether we wage war.
I would like to propose the following test for whether or not the United States is justified in going to war with Iraq. A war is justified if all of the following conditions are met:
The Iraqi government possesses, or is likely soon to possess, significant weapons of mass destruction.
There is a specific threat that the Iraqi government will use such weapons against citizens of the United States.
There is good reason to believe that a war will substantially remove this threat.
There is good reason to believe that the destruction caused by the war will not be worse than the threat left without a war.
There are no options for removing the threat through less destructive means than war.
Now, neither Jonathan Melville nor myself is a U.N. weapons inspector. Neither of us has any particular access to whether (1) is true or false. As it happens, Hans Blix, who is in charge of chemical and biological weapons inspections, and Mohamed El-Baradei, who is in charge of nuclear weapons inspections explicitly deny that they have discovered anything which should prompt a war against Iraq. Since Mr. Melville claims to know that Iraq does in fact possess banned chemical and biological weapons, and also claims to know that they are about to have nuclear weapons, perhaps he has access to secret intelligence that the U.N. weapons inspectors do not. But he can hardly expect us to take his assertions on blind faith.
But even if (1) turns out to be true, neither the Bush administration, nor Jonathan Melville, has bothered to present any evidence whatsoever for (2)-(4). There is no evidence at all that Saddam Hussein has any more plans to attack the United States now than he did for the past twelve years. Has something changed in that time to transform a broken, beaten, third world country into an imminent threat to the world’s last unchallenged superpower? If something has changed, then the War Party should point it out. But, as far as I can tell, no-one has shown that anything has changed except the belligerence of the ruling party in Washington, DC.
How about (5)? Are there any options other than war? Certainly there are. For example, the United States can step back and let the inspections process continue to work–as Hans Blix and Mohamed El-Baradei have indicated they would be willing and able to do.
Mr. Melville and his fellow epistolator Charlie Vaughan do not present any evidence for believing that (2)-(5) are true. Instead, they both try to use an analogy with the struggle against fascism as a historical backdrop for the Bush administration’s plans for war–by accusing peace supporters of favoring appeasement of Saddam Hussein, as Neville Chamberlain favored appeasement of Hitler.
The attempted comparison is a grotesque abuse of history. Saddam Hussein is certainly a ruthless dictator with a lot of blood on his hands. However, comparing him to Hitler simply blanks out one minor detail: while Hitler stood atop a massive military machine that conquered nearly all of Europe in a few short years, Hussein is the tinhorn dictator of a devastated third world country, completely surrounded by hostile and militarily superior forces. There is no appeasement of Hussein to be done, because he poses a threat to no other country. What peace supporters ask is that we do not go out of our way to unleash the destruction of war on the Iraqi people when we can deal with Saddam Hussein through peaceful means.
Mr. Vaughan also angrily accuses Dr. El Moghazy of comments that are a slap in the face of those currently serving in our military. But El Moghazy never criticized women and men in the military–rather, his criticism was directed against the Administration that is dead-set on putting those brave men and women in harm’s way. It seems to me that it is no disrespect to our troops to try to keep them from being sent off to die in another dumb foreign war. If I were in the military, I’d rather have people support our troops by keeping me alive, rather than by giving me a medal after I’m dead.