Posted on 06/02/2004 4:41:49 PM PDT by perfect stranger
The invasion of Iraq has gone fabulously well, exceeding everyone's expectations – certainly exceeding the doomsday scenarios of liberals. The Bush-haters' pre-war predictions – hundreds of thousands dead, chemical attacks on our troops, retaliatory terrorist attacks in the United States, an invasion by Turkey, oil facilities in flames and apocalyptic environmental consequences – have proven to be about as accurate as Bill Clinton's "legally accurate" statements about Monica Lewinsky.
Inasmuch as they can't cite any actual failures in Iraq, liberals busy themselves by claiming the administration somehow "misled" them about the war.
As I understand it, there would be no lunatics shouting "Bush lied, kids died!" if Paul Wolfowitz had admitted before the war that Saddam "probably hadn't rebuilt his nuclear program" – the one that was unilaterally blown up by the Israelis in 1981, thank God. What Wolfowitz should have said is that "proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the way you think about law enforcement, and I think we're much closer to being in a state of war than being in a judicial proceeding."
Liberals would be all sugar and sweetness if only – instead of blathering about nukes, nukes, nukes – Wolfowitz had forthrightly conceded back in 2002 that "there's an awful lot we don't know, an awful lot that we may never know, and we've got to think differently about standards of proof here."
Also, I assume we wouldn't be hearing that the administration is frustrated by its failure to instantly create a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq if Wolfowitz had said something like, "[W]ell, Japan isn't Jeffersonian democracy, either." If only Wolfowitz had lowered expectations by saying that "even if [Iraq] makes it only Romanian style, that's still such an advance over anywhere else in the Arab world."
Also, the media would have no grounds for complaint if Wolfowitz had said Iraqi democracy "is not the president's declared purpose of 'regime change' in Iraq, which is to get rid of a very bad man." If only he had mentioned that Saddam Hussein "has been known to have children tortured in front of their parents."
But guess what? That is exactly what Wolfowitz did say! All these quotes are from a Sept. 22, 2002, article in the New York Times magazine written by Bill Keller, now editor-in-chief at the seditious rag. The last paragraph about Saddam's torture of children are Keller's paraphrases of Wolfowitz; the rest are direct quotes from the wily neoconservative himself.
But you'd have to put liberals in Abu Ghraib to get them to tell the truth about what people were saying before the war – and then the problem would be that most liberals would enjoy those activities. (No torture has yet been devised that could get a liberal to mention the poor, beleaguered Kurds dancing in the streets because Saddam is gone.)
To refresh everyone's recollection, before the war began, the Democrats' argument was that Iraq was not an "imminent" threat to the United States. The Republicans' argument was: By the time the threat is imminent, Chicago will be gone. Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address specifically responded to the Democrats' demand that we wait for nuclear and biological threats to be "imminent" before we act. But now, liberals want to have their Nigerian yellow cake and eat it, too.
In January 2003 – or three months after Sen. Tom Daschle voted for the Iraq war resolution hoping to fool the voters of South Dakota this November – he was horrified that Bush seemed to be actually contemplating war with Iraq! According to Daschle, Bush should have waited for Iraq to grow into a problem of crisis proportions before deciding to do anything – citing the Cuban missile crisis as a model to be emulated. "If we have proof of nuclear and biological weapons," Daschle asked, "why doesn't [Bush] show that proof to the world as President Kennedy did 40 years ago when he sent Adlai Stevenson to show the world U.S. photographs of offensive missiles in Cuba?"
The answer is and was: Because by the time Saddam had nuclear weapons, we wouldn't be able to do anything. That's why it's known as the "Cuban missile crisis," not the "Cuban missile triumph."
Before the war, Democrats were carping about the Bush administration's inability to predict the future and tell us everything that would happen in Iraq after the war. On MSNBC in September 2002, for example, Robert Menendez, D-N.J., was complaining that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "didn't have an answer for what happens in a post-Saddam Iraq." But now liberals are acting as if the Bush administration said they knew exactly what would happen after liberating a country from a 30-year barbaric dictatorship – and got it wrong.
The good news is: Liberals' anti-war hysteria seems to have run its course. I base this conclusion on Al Gore's lunatic anti-war speech last week. Gore always comes out swinging just as an issue is about to go south. He's the stereotypical white guy always clapping on the wrong beat. Gore switched from being a pro-defense Democrat to a lefty peacenik – just before the 9-11 attack. He grew a beard – just in time for an attack on the nation by fundamentalist Muslims. He endorsed Howard Dean – just as the orange-capped Deaniacs were punching themselves out. Gore even went out and got really fat – just before America officially gave up carbs. This guy is always leaping into the mosh pit at the precise moment the crowd parts. Mark my words: Now that good old Al has come lunging in, the anti-war movement is dead.
She's good.
I can't wait till next week.
Yes, the libs having been doing a rather good job rewriting history. It's amazing the number of people who can't remember the events of the last couple years. In all fairness, I'm guessing they just weren't paying attention.
Ah the intellect that calms the savage beast. It's always a sad thing to hit the period at the end of one of her bits.
Liberals... once again, on the wrong side of history.
Yes, she is!
She VERY good!
Great line.
Gore always comes out swinging just as an issue is about to go south. He's the stereotypical white guy always clapping on the wrong beat. Gore switched from being a pro-defense Democrat to a lefty peacenik – just before the 9-11 attack. He grew a beard – just in time for an attack on the nation by fundamentalist Muslims. He endorsed Howard Dean – just as the orange-capped Deaniacs were punching themselves out. Gore even went out and got really fat – just before America officially gave up carbs. This guy is always leaping into the mosh pit at the precise moment the crowd parts.
Excellent. Just Perfect.
BUMP
BUMP
Thanks for the alert.
Great column.
I like Ann a lot.
Great column and that closing paragraph is about as sweet as it gets. Damn I'm glad she's on our side!
Lately, I've noticed that Coulter's work is riddled with Mark Twain-like humor that seems to get better and better. Not only does this woman have an incisive mind, she has a rapier wit! What a talent!
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