Posted on 11/21/2005 7:34:27 PM PST by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
When we were younger, it was easy to know who the liars were. Kids have an innate alarm for lies, and those who get caught at it are usually tarred as “Liar, Liar, Pants on fire!” before long. Would that it were so simple for adults, and especially that unique class of adults we call politicians.
For some time, we have been listening to the chorus from the Left calling the President a liar over Iraqi WMD as though that weren’t only one of the 22 reasons cited in the 2002 Senate Resolution. “Bush Lied, Thousands Died!” the chant says. Ted Kennedy says “This whole thing was a fraud.” Last weekend John Kerry called the war in Iraq “one of the great acts of misleading and deception in American history.” Former Ambassador Joe Wilson simply called George Bush a “liar” and Dick Cheney “a lying sonofabitch.”
Last weekend, the President decided he would no longer wave off these attacks, and restated rather firmly why we are in Iraq, and why it was the right thing to do. He took the high road, ignoring the accusers, and focusing on the truth. Arguably, a bad move.
Anyone who watches television these days knows that no one wins the case until the cross-examination. That’s the climactic point in every cop, court, or crime drama on TV – the moment when, in the throes of cross-examination, the witness trips up and is shown to be lying. You can just about hear the jury sigh in relief as the heroic attorney leads them in an implied chorus of “Liar, Liar, Pants on fire!”
That being the case, if the President is going to convince the American public of the facts, he may have to go beyond merely stating them and make sure that all of his accusers have their day in court, so to speak. The facts are fairly simple: The United States invaded Iraq because, in part, for at least a decade, everyone who knew anything about Iraq knew that Iraq either had or was after WMD, and had close ties to known terrorist organizations. After being sucker-punched on September 11th, 2001, it would have been indefensible to do anything other than pre-empt the next credible threat on the horizon, and Iraq was a credible threat.
Now, Ted Kennedy says the whole thing was cooked up in Texas, yet he also said in 2002 that “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's … pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." But that would also be the same Ted Kennedy that opposes killing murderers but favors killing the unborn, and poses as a defender of women’s rights despite his checkered history at Chappaquiddick. Objection? Goes to character, your honor.
Similarly, John Kerry has been ranting so much lately you’d think he was taking stage direction from Cindy Sheehan. Yet, wasn’t it John Kerry who petitioned the President to take action against Saddam Hussein in 1998, and in 2002 declared that Hussein “must be disarmed”? But this would also be the same John Kerry who dined for years on his fabricated stories of atrocities in Vietnam and the secret trips into Laos he never made. Objection? Goes to pattern of misconduct, your honor.
Joe Wilson has tried to make discussion of the war about himself, alleging the White House “outed” his CIA wife in retaliation for having exposed “lies” about the war. Yet Joe Wilson claimed his report said that Iraq had no interest in Nigerian plutonium when the Senate Intelligence Committee said that his report suggested exactly the opposite. This would also be the same Joe Wilson who claimed to be on a mission authorized by the Vice President, when there was no such authorization at all. Objection? Goes to credibility, your honor.
The fact that no WMD have been found may mean that our intelligence was wrong, but does not mean that the intelligence was false. There is a difference between a mistake and a lie. By continually chanting “Bush Lied!”, the Left is trying to pull off a propaganda coup that only Goebbels or P. T. Barnum could admire. To allow them to succeed at it would be a mistake.
The facts are already out there. Perhaps it’s time to cross-examine the accusers. And before it’s over, some of them may wish they were wearing fire-proof shorts.
Last night I went to Vote-smart and read old Biden speeches. There is nothing wrong with hoping other countries would support our effort in Iraq, but Biden's speeches indicate he was well aware of the facts as we knew them to be at the time. He simply repeated the Kerry mantra that we need to have international support. "International support" is very vague. I want to know exactly what countries these idiots thought we could get on our side. I want to know why they don't acknowledge and blast the U.N. for their role in not allowing U.S./German/British inspectors in Iraq prior to the war. Where is the outrage about oil for food? Where is the outrage about Russian ivolvement in spiriting the evidence out of Iraq? Why are our own countrymen so willing to blame our President and so unwilling to blame those who are responsible for the lack of international support? (other nations and the U.N.) THIS is where the Dems are unpatriotic.
If the National Basketball Association has something to do with Basketball, and Major league Baseball has something to do with Baseball,
Why has it not occurred to you that Operation Iraqi Freedom had something to do with "Freedom"?
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