What do you get when you have nine Democrats who want to be president of the United States, none of whom has a message or an agenda that resonates with the public?
Answer: Name calling and accusations against President Bush that could have long-term negative ramifications for this country.
Specifically, the Democratic candidates are attacking the credibility of our intelligence agencies and the veracity of data that, they claim, both President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair used as justification to launch a war against Saddam Hussein.
First, let’s deal with the weapons of mass destruction (WMD). “Where are they”? cry the Democrats. There is no question that Hussein possessed them. Every UN report from the early nineties until the most recent inspection confirmed that he either had them at a specific location or that his agents were hindering efforts to locate them at specific sites.
Last month, an Iraqi scientist who was involved in helping develop nuclear weapons took U.S. troops to his back yard to show them the materials he was ordered to bury under his rose bushes. Are U.S. troops supposed to dig up every garden in Iraq to locate weapons? Even if they did undertake such a massive project, it would take years, not months, to locate these weapons and particles.
Rush Limbaugh, among others, has wondered why, if Hussein did not have WMD, the former Iraqi dictator risked – and ultimately lost – his hold on a country that brought him billions of oil dollars annually. Saddam may be insane, but he’s not stupid.
Now there’s a big to-do over sixteen words from the president’s State of the Union address last January, in which he stated there were intelligence reports that Saddam was negotiating a purchase of uranium from Niger.
It turns out the report most probably was unreliable (though Blair, up until recently a darling of American liberals, still stands by it). Aha! shout the Democrats – this proves Bush misled the country, that he lied to drive up support for the war with Iraq. The president, according to Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and the rest of the bunch, has a truth problem.
(Just an aside here: I believe that most Democrats, after the way they doggedly defended Bill Clinton for eight long years, have just about forfeited the right to question anybody’s truthfulness.)
The fact is, however, that Lieberman, Kerry and other Democrats who voted to support the war did so four months before the State of the Union address. Furthermore, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, also a presidential contender, sits on the Intelligence Committee. He saw everything the administration saw – and he still supported the war.
Attacking one’s opponents is nothing new in politics. The mudslinging can be vicious, destroying reputations and careers. But these new and ugly accusations against the president and the intelligence community are more dangerous than the typical personal attacks politicians level against each other for political gain.
The war in Iraq is by no means over. Our enemies in the region are nowhere near ending their support for terrorism. Saddam had probably thought that, thanks to the Hollywood elite, the tens of thousands of leftist protestors in the streets, and the Democratic Party’s ‘activist base,’ he could win enough time to hide his weapons, his money, even himself until the heat died down. He gambled and lost.
But what happens if the constant attacks on our intelligence apparatus, by people whose sole agenda consists of getting themselves elected, neutralize the Pentagon the next time America has to use force to initiate regime change? Will the president hesitate, fearing political fallout? Will the protests we saw before the Iraq war grow in size because Lieberman, Kerry, and company were able to convinced Americans they were deceived by their government? Will Israel and Bush’s Jewish advisers once again be blamed by anti-Semites for ‘fooling’ the country into supporting an ‘unjust’ war?
Asking tough questions and improving our information-gathering capability is vitally important, but attacking the security agencies and the president because of naked political ambition puts all our lives at risk.
The war against Iraq was a just and righteous one. The mass graves showing the skeletal remains of children with bullet holes and torture markings should have been enough to silence the administration’s critics.
(Imagine a scenario where police in your neighborhood get a report of a massive drug ring operating out of a local apartment. They come in with full force, guns drawn, knocking down doors, roughing up a few resisting suspects. But they find no drugs. Rather, they find a kiddie-porn ring that preyed on innocent young children. Are you going to complain that the police had no business conducting the raid?)
The Bush administration laid out, before the American people, ample justification for the war against Saddam. Part of that justification was the widespread belief, among both Democrats and Republicans, that Iraq had at least the means to develop WMD, and most likely already possessed a potent arsenal.
We have every reason to believe the president was telling the truth and that time will prove him right.
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