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Frontpage Debate has the pleasure of welcoming, from the Left, David Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation magazine and the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception; from the Right, we are joined by Joel Mowbray, a syndicated columnist and the author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America's Security. Frontpage Magazine: Mr. Corn and Mr. Mowbray, welcome to Frontpage Debate.
I think a good way to begin would be discussing the recent developments in Iraq. How do you see the capture of Saddam. A great successful blow for Bush, for the liberation of Iraq, and for the War on Terror in general. Right? Mr. Corn, why don’t you start? Corn: Sure, it's good news for Bush and Iraqis. As I wrote on The Nation website that day (www.thenation.com), good can come out of bad. Bush sold the war on the basis of an immediate threat posed by Hussein, claiming US intelligence showed beyond doubt that Hussein had WMDs and that Hussein had an operational alliance with al Qaeda. Neither of those assertions have yet been proven true. In fact, reviews of the prewar intelligence by the House and Senate intelligence committees (each led by Republicans) have disclosed that the prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMDs was circumstantial, fragmentary, and full of uncertainties. David Kay, the chief weapons hunter for the Bush administration, testified before Congress in October and said that the prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMD was "bounded by large uncertainties." That is not what Bush said or continues to say, as he keeps insisting he had "good, solid intelligence." So the capture of Hussein--as much of the success that it was--does not, ex post facto, justify the war. Bush could have said that the purpose of the war was to nab Hussein because he was a repressive dictator. But that was not his central argument. And his capture is not necessarily progress in Bush's "war on terror." There still is no solid evidence he had anything to do with 9/11 or the main threat to the United States: al Qaeda. FP: Mr. Mowbray? Mowbray: First off, I am pleased to be debating someone I greatly admire and respect--even if I disagree with him most of the time. That said, David is claiming that Bush said Saddam posed an imminent threat, when the whole argument was premised on the wisdom of taking out the tyrant *before* he posed an imminent threat. To paraphrase Condi Rice (among others), we didn't want to wait for a "smoking gun" and have the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud. And let's be perfectly clear, until we inspect not just all or Iraq, but Syria as well, no one can say with a straight face that Saddam didn't have WMDs. Since David mentioned Kay's interim report, it seems appropriate to remind folks that Kay had, in fact, found evidence of ongoing programs--the only purpose of which (of course) is the development of WMDs. And why did we need to have ironclad proof that Saddam had caches of WMDs? Not only would that have been a deadly game of Iraqi Roulette, but it would ignore the fact that he had already used them multiple times and had invaded his neighbors multiple times. His track record, combined with the fact that he had WMD programs, is more than enough justification for the liberation of Iraq. Not to mention that taking out a sworn enemy of the U.S.--one who had the capability to help further anti-American terrorists (and had overtly done so in supporting the families of Palestinian suicide bombers; what would stop him from doing the same to someone who blows himself up in NY Penn Station?)--is an undeniable victory in the war on terror. Corn: Bush, as far as I can tell, never used the word "imminent." But he did say that the threat was direct, not prospective. He did say that Saddam Hussein "on any given day" could slip one of his WMDs to al Qaeda with whom Hussein (according to Bush) was "dealing." When Bush was seeking authority from Congress to launch a war against Iraq, he sent to Capitol Hill a draft resolution that stated there was a "high risk" Iraq would use weapons of mass destruction "to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its armed forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so." He said Hussein had a "massive" stockpile of biological weapons. On March 6, 2003, and said, "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people." A reporter asked Bush why other nations did not believe the threat from was "so real, so imminent." Bush did not take issue with this characterization. He replied, "I think the threat is real."
This all seems rather imminent to me. Moreover, we now know that the Bush administration did not possess conclusive evidence confirming that Hussein had WMDs or was in cahoots with al Qaeda. Still, Bush made these assertions.
Bush, Cheney and Company did not say they were off to war to stop WMD "programs." They claimed they knew beyond any doubt that Hussein had actual weapons. Obviously, weapons programs would have been a worry. But programs pose a different sort of a threat than weapons. And they can be handled in a different manner. Before the war, Bush did not argue that because Hussein had used WMDs in the 1980s (when he was being supported by the Reagan-Bush administration) and because he still showed an interest in WMDs and had not fully come clean with the UN inspectors, it was utterly necessary on March 19, 2003, to invade Iraq and occupy it. His argument was that Americans were threatened in the here-and-now by Hussein. And to make that claim seem realistic he and his aides made exaggerated statements about Iraq's WMDs and its supposed operational ties to al Qaeda. If Bush had wanted to level with the American public, he could have tried to make the ex-post-facto case that Joel outlines above before going to war. Mowbray: I believe what we have here is an "admission." David admits that the president--in all his many comments, speeches, and interviews--never did use the word "imminent." Well, I'll go one step further: Bush actually made very clear that we wanted to take out Saddam because the threat wasn't yet imminent, but that only a foolish nation would wait until the threat reached that level. And yes, Bush talked repeatedly about Saddam's past behavior as adding to the justification for deposing the despot. Corn: Joel, go back and reread my reply. It is clear that Bush presented Iraq as a direct threat that had to be taken care of immediately, that there was no time to waste, that the United States could not afford to give a more intrusive inspections process another few months. Why? Because Hussein had WMDs--not weapons programs, as he disingenuously said in his recent State of the Union address--and was firmly allied with al Qaeda. So far, the evidence does not confirm either proposition. Don't get hung up on the I-word. Look at all his comments.
Mowbray: With all due respect, I will get "hung up" on the I-word, because he specifically rejected the proposition that Saddam posed an imminent threat. The rationale was simple: we must act *before* Saddam becomes an imminent threat. As for the question of WMDs, I defer to David Kay, who said, "We were almost all wrong." Bush never pressured analysts, and based on the best available info at the time, he made the right call. For the record, though, a president's job is guard against the worst plausible scenario--which is exactly what Bush did by taking out Saddam. And the lark that Saddam had no ties to terrorists is an awful red herring. For the best analysis of that now-faddish claim that Saddam was not part of the worldwide terror network, refer to Deroy Murdock's indispensable piece in last month's American Outlook magazine, available online at www.hudson.org. Corn: So when it comes to national security, the ends justify misleading the public? I'd like to see conservatives stand by that position as they defend a president who claimed he would "restore" honesty to the White House. There is a question as to whether intelligence analysts (honestly) botched their assessments and overstated the WMD threat--whether they were pressured or not. But there is no question that Bush made prewar assertions that were not supported by the intelligence. Read my upcoming piece in The Nation or the recent report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for a list of examples. Here's only one: Bush told the public that Hussein had a "massive stockpile" of biological weapons. The National Intelligence Estimate said no such thing, noting only the existence of a bioweapons program. And CIA director George Tenet said on February 5, "We said we had no specific information on the types or quantities of [biological] weapons, agent, or stockpiles at Baghdad’s disposal." Bush and his lieutenants repeatedly overstated or misstated the facts on WMDs and Hussein's supposed operational alliance with al Qaeda. Three weeks ago, Colin Powell told reporters, "I have not seen smoking-gun concrete evidence about the [Husein-al Qaeda] connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist." Possibility? That's not what the president said. He claimed Hussein and al Qaeda were fully in cahoots. And when he was asked at a press conference to back up this allegation by citing evidence, he declined to do so. One can decide, at the end of the day, that the war was right and it doesn't matter that Bush made statements that were untrue--statements that he and others near him either realized or should have realized were false. But let's be honest about what happened: Bush sold a war with misinformation, or disinformation. FP: This debate over WMDs and the Saddam-Osama repeatedly takes on a cyclical nature. In terms of the Hussein-Al Qaeda link, for instance, no matter how much evidence confirms it, there is always some kind of denial going on. Frontpage’s recent interviews with Stephen F. Hayes, the staff writer at The Weekly Standard,and with Laurie Myrloie, the author of Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein´s Unfinished War against America, demonstrated that the evidence of Iraq’s terror ties and connection to 9/11 is conclusive. In any case, we’ll get back to this in a moment, but because our time is limited, I want to make sure we touch on a few other related themes. The role of the State Department, for instance, has really been put into question in all of this. It appears that State is actually harming our interests in this War on Terror, rather than being an asset to it. Mr. Mowbray, your new book, Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America's Security, discusses this problem. You make a very strong case that the State Department actually acts against American interests abroad. Indeed, as you point out, it even tried to stop attempts to toughen visa requirements after 9/11. Give our readers a few highlights of what you found in your research. Mowbray: What I found is that regardless of the subject, the State Department always approached an issue in the same way: representing the interests of foreign governments in America, rather than the interests of America in the foreign countries. This has been the case not just with visas--where the need for the Saudis to have easy visas was considered more important than the U.S. security need for tightening restrictions--but in every area from arms control to international child abductions. State has done this not because they are evil or treasonous, but rather because they sincerely believe that it is their job to represent the interests of foreign governments--all in the name of both stability and smooth relations. So it's not, for example, that they don't care about recovering abducted children from the desert prison of Saudi Arabia; it's just that they care much more about keeping smooth relations with the Saudis. For those who doubt me, consider the most clear-cut of examples. When U.S. victims of terrorism (or their relatives) sue terror-sponsoring regimes in the pursuit of justice, State routinely--and only--sides not with the Americans victims of terrorism, but with the foreign governments that sponsored the terrorism. It doesn't get much more black-and-white than that. FP: Mr. Corn what are your views on this subject of the State Department and what Mr. Mowbray is saying? Corn: I'll let Joel have his say on this. But I will note that State Department critics who make Foggy Bottom out to be the enemy--folks like Newt Gingrich or Pat Robertson, who while interviewing Joel advocated nuking the State Department--ought to hold Mr. Responsibility (a.k.a. George W. Bush) responsible for what goes on there. If Bush doesn't like how Colin Powell and his underlings supposedly represent the interests of foreigners over Americans, then let him shit-can this American hero. Mowbray: If David had read my book, he would know that I pin relatively very little blame on Colin Powell. His biggest fault is that he has yet to try to reform the place. But given the incredible institutional hurdles that make such an effort near-impossible--the Secretary of State does not even have the authority to fire a convicted felon, for example--he likely would have had, at best, only marginal success if he had tried. That's why you can't always hold Bush responsible for what goes on over there; it is a mess decades in the making. The root of the problem is the corrosive culture of the careerists, who view the world in terms of stability and favor banks, almost oblivious to any sense of right or wrong. Morality shouldn't dictate policy, but you can't make policy in a moral vacuum, either. That does not come from W, but from their own belief system, which trumps the president's prescriptions in their minds. When Bush goes in the right direction--trying to bring freedom and democracy to the Arab world, for example--State works actively to undermine him. Corn: Joel, did you read every page of my book? Feel free not to answer. We're both too busy writing to read, I suspect. I don't deny that bureaucratic rigidity exists in State. It also can be found at the DoD, the CIA, the Department of Agriculture, and the US Postal Service. It is a president's job to issue marching orders to the bureaucracies and appoint people who can make sure the orders are followed. But--okay--let's not hold Bush at fault for what happens in Foggy Bottom. Let's just hold him responsible for his own statements and actions. I am quite happy to judge him on that alone. FP: Ok, in terms of Bush’s statement and actions, let’s focus in on that for a moment, Mr. Corn, as your new book The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception focuses on this issue. For the sake of our readers, could you highlight some of the “lies” you allege Bush has told, and the politics of deception you maintain that he has practised?
Corn: Well I have already touched on several of them – and there are so many other examples. He said the vast majority of the benefits of his tax cuts would go to the bottom end of the income spectrum. Not true. He said he would only deploy a missile defense system that worked. Not true--his administration is deploying a system that has not yet been proven to work. He said his administration is doing everything possible to protect the homeland. Yet it has not moved to provide effective security at chemical weapons plants. It has blocked a measure passed by the Republican-controlled House to mandate the screening of cargo carried by passenger airliners. It has not provided sufficient funding for security at ports. And as a report put out by a Council on Foreign Relations task force headed by former Senator Warren Rudman (a Republican) noted, the Bush administration is under funding emergency first responders by $100 billion over the next five years. You want more? Look at his stem cell decision. Bush insisted there were 60 existing stem cells lines that could be used for federally funded research purposes--and that these lines could provide the basis for an effective and robust research effort. (In his view, this meant that there was no need to create additional lines--which would have offended social conservatives who generally oppose stem cells research.) Instead, there were less than a dozen available lines--not nearly enough for a decent research program. Yet when experts in the field pointed this out. Bush and his aides continued to maintain the 60 count was accurate. What else? Bush said SAT scores went up in Texas when he was governor. They went down. He said Al Gore had outspent him during the 2000 campaign. No, he had outspent Gore two-to one. The numbers of the budget plan he presented in 2000 literally did not add up. He said he had a plan to "address" global warming, but his plan permitted large increases in the emissions of global warming gasses, thus exacerbating the problem. He said that no one could have foreseen the 9/11 attacks--when there were numerous intelligence warnings that al-Qaeda and other terrorists were interested in mounting exactly that sort of strike against the United States. In late May, he said, "we found the weapons of mass destruction." But--ahem--that did not pan out. He also claimed we attacked Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to let weapons inspectors in. Not at all. Hussein's overall record of cooperation was mixed, but he did allow inspectors to visit sites of their own choosing. For more, read the book. Or go to www.bushlies.com. FP: Mr. Mowbray how would you counter these charges against Bush? Mowbray: One of the things I admire most about David is his ability for self-promotion--and, yes, I mean that literally. I can only say that because his book is a lot more palatable--and more researched, etc.--than many other lefties' books. But he does here what he does often in his book, which is he chooses one interpretation and deems a different one a "lie." Case in point, the tax cut analysis. Before Bush's tax cut, the top 1% paid 62% of income taxes, but now pay 64% after. On the lower end of the scale, the poor did do proportionately better, meaning a bigger percentage reduction in tax burden than wealthier folks. But did the local Jiffy Lube mechanic get a bigger dollar break in his taxes than Bill Gates? Of course not--but Bill Gates also pays a lot more to begin with. On the missile defense system, David apparently has inscrutably high standards. I'm not an expert on this area, but following the reporting of John Miller (writing for my old publication, National Review), it seems most objective analysts are quite high on the progress of SDI, and that to the extent there have been "misses" during practice tests, they have been more "near" than "miss." Just for time reasons, I can't respond to each of David's contentions, but I will say in response to his general theme of underfunding of homeland security, the administration is trying to avoid throwing money down a sinkhole. Money spent does not always equal results, particularly when there is no infrastructure in place where the money can actually do anything. This whole business is so new that it will take time before we can be at full levels of funding. Corn: Tax cuts--very simply. Bush said, "The vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum." No way. Citizens for Tax Justice calculated that 42.6 percent of the $1.6 trillion tax package went to the top 1 percent, and 12.6 percent went to the lower 60 percent--which would be quite a liberal definition of "bottom end." Sure, dismiss CTJ as a liberal group. But, tellingly, Bush never disputed these numbers or released his own distributional analysis. Instead, the Bush campaign (and then the Bush White House) engaged in all sorts of fuzzy math.
For instance, Bush, echoing Joel's line, claimed that under his plan, a $22,000-a-year single mom waitress, who faces higher marginal tax rates than a $200,000-a-year attorney, would end up paying no income taxes under his plan. Sounds like a good deal. But--whoops--when Time magazine asked Deloitte & Touche to analyze the Bush plan, those radical accountants reported that this single mom would net nothing--zilch, zippo, nada--from Bush's tax package, for if she had been calculating her income tax correctly she already owed nothing (thanks to existing child care credits and the Earned Income Tax Credit). Bush was promoting a myth, rather than saying, yeah, most of the tax cuts go to the wealthy and let me tell you why that is a good thing.
As for missile defense, Bush vowed he would only deploy a system that works. Joel can refer to unnamed "objective analysts." Let me quote the Pentagon's office of operational testing and evaluation. Last year--long after Bush had made that pledge--it noted that the core element of Bush's missile defense system "has yet to demonstrate significant operational capability." In plain English: it has not yet been proven to work. Still, Bush had begun deploying the system. Case closed.
On homeland security, I agree that money is not always the right measure. But clearly some homeland security needs are being underfunded. A task force headed by former Republican Senator Warren Rudamn noted that the needs of first responders are being underfunded by $100 billion over the next five years. But my point was that Bush has falsely claimed that he is doing "everything possible" to secure the homeland. If so, then why hasn't his administration created new security safeguards for chemical plants (as Tom Ridge urged in October 2002)? The reason: the industry has opposed such regulations. More to the point, the Bush administration blocked legislation approved by the GOP-controlled House to mandate the screening of cargo carried by passenger aircraft. The reason: the aviation industry opposed the measure. Mowbray: First things first: Bush's tax cuts have resulted in 9 million low-income people being taken off the income tax rolls. Of course, everyone still needs to pay payroll taxes, but that just increases the impetus to reform Social Security so that people will be able to keep some of that money in order to build a nest egg for retirement--something this President has pledged to do. The problems we've seen with missile defense tests have largely been with take-off, such as decoupling, not really with trouble intercepting the "warheads" in the simulated tests. So when David talks about the lack of "significant operational capability," that's an unreasonable standard when the final product is still years away, even under the most optimistic assumptions--meaning there's time to fix relatively minor problems along the way. Of course the simplistic political argument is to blame opposition from particular industries being the cause for a Republican president backing off of something, but it's not so simple. Your argument assumes that because an industry wants something, it must be bad for the rest of us. But what if the airlines oppose certain measures because they would tie the friendly skies in knots while providing, at best, a marginal security benefit--if any at all. Massive delays and hundreds of grounded flights for possibly no improvement in security is not in the best interests of any of us. Corn: I am amazed at how much slack Joel wants to cut Bush. Saying you will not deploy a weapons system until it is proven to work is a pretty straightforward pledge. He did not say he would deploy it once certain elements are shown to work. I am not presenting an unreasonable standard. I am only holding Bush to the standard he established. If he wants to say, we have to spend billions and deploy before the full system is proven to be ready-to-go, then let him do so. On taxes, I refer Joel to the work of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Brookings Institution, and the Tax Policy Center. They have shown that many of the claims Bush put forward about his tax cuts removing millions of low-income earners from the tax rolls are not true. But my argument here is not that Bush's tax policy has been good or bad--though you can suspect what I think of it--but that Bush has dramatically and repeatedly misrepresented it, especially concerning the distribution of benefits. Even if Joel's stat is correct, it does not counter the argument that Bush spoke falsely when he said the "vast majority" of the benefits of his tax cuts goes to the "bottom end." You have to do the full math. And regarding homeland security, Joel is right: industry opposition does not mean a policy is correct. But stick to the issue at hand. Bush keeps telling us he is doing everything possible to secure the homeland. Yet he has not taken steps to deal with cargo security, he has been slow to beef up security at chemical plants and ports, and he has not fully funded emergency responders. Mowbray: Why are we going around and around on the defensive weapons system? It is workable in the sense that it is exactly where it should be now in order to be operational at the time the system is actually completed. I'm not an expert, but from eveything I'm told by very smart people who do this stuff professionally, you can't have an operational quality--meaning it could work in the real world--from the beginning stages of development. What is your solution? Build an operational-quality prototype over several years using today's technology, and then once you have that done, use likely already-outdated technology to build a system? Here's the rub: with the proliferation of WMDs into more and more despotic hands, time is critical. So if development is on the proper and expected pace in order to be operational when finally deployed, isn't that the most effective--and smartest--manner in which to proceed? When it comes to tax cuts, you and I could continue this dance ad infinitum. People received tax cuts roughly proportionate to taxes paid, although people at the bottom end did get back proportionately more of their income taxes paid than those at the high end. Although, as both you and I know, the most regressive tax--and the one that consequently shellacks those from the middle class on down--is the FICA payroll taxes. The solution--opposed by Democrats and your ilk--is to offer personal accounts, so that people who otherwise could not would be able to build up sizeable nest eggs by retirement. And guess what? That's what Bush wants to do--something that, depending on the details, could be greatly progressive, with the greatest benefit flowing to those who earn less. As for the idea of not "everything" being done, come on. I'm not a Bush apologist, and I've publicly criticized his administration on a number of security-related fronts. But your notion that underspending is one of this president's problems is just silly. He's spending like a drunken Imelda Marcos in a shoe store. FP: Gentlemen, our time is up. I apologize. Perhaps we can have another round of this discussion, and Mr. Corn, with your initiative and approval, perhaps we can do the next one in the pages of The Nation. In any case, it was a real pleasure to have both of you join Frontpage Debate. We’ll see you again soon.
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s new book Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of the new book The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.
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