Posted on 10/07/2004 4:11:59 PM PDT by areafiftyone
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq (news - web sites) war debate to a new issue — whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.
Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."
Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) brushed aside the central findings of chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles ' — that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any either — while Bush unapologetically defended his decision to invade Iraq.
"The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said as he prepared to fly to campaign events in Wisconsin. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away."
Duelfer found no formal plan by Saddam to resume WMD production, but the inspector surmised that Saddam intended to do so if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Bush seized upon that inference, using the word "intent" three times in reference to Saddam's plans to resume making weapons.
This week marks the first time that the Bush administration has listed abuses in the oil-for-fuel program as an Iraq war rationale. But the strategy holds risks because some of the countries that could be implicated include U.S. allies, such as Poland, Jordan and Egypt. In addition, the United States itself played a significant role in both the creation of the program and how it was operated and overseen.
For his part, Cheney dismissed the significance of Duelfer's central findings, telling supporters in Miami, "The headlines all say `no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad.' We already knew that."
The vice president said he found other parts of the report "more intriguing," including the finding that Saddam's main goal was the removal of international sanctions.
"As soon as the sanctions were lifted, he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.
The report underscored that "delay, defer, wait, wasn't an option," Cheney said. And he told a later forum in Fort Myers, Fla., speaking of the oil-for-food program: "The sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams. Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars."
Yet Bush and Cheney acknowledged more definitively than before that Saddam did not have the banned weapons that both men had asserted he did — and had cited as the major justification before attacking Iraq in March 2003.
Bush has recently left the question open. For example, when asked in June whether he thought such weapons had existed in Iraq, Bush said he would "wait until Charlie (Duelfer) gets back with the final report."
In July, Bush said, "We have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction," a sentence construction that kept alive the possibility the weapons might yet be discovered.
On Thursday, the president used the clearest language to date nailing the question shut:
"Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there," Bush said. His words placed the blame on U.S. intelligence agencies.
In recent weeks, Cheney has glossed over the primary justification for the war, most often by simply not mentioning it. But in late January 2004, Cheney told reporters in Rome: "There's still work to be done to ascertain exactly what's there."
"The jury is still out," he told National Public Radio the same week, when asked whether Iraq had possessed banned weapons.
Duelfer's report was presented Wednesday to senators and the public with less than four weeks left in a fierce presidential campaign dominated by questions about Iraq and the war on terror.
In Bayonne, N.J., Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards (news - web sites) on Thursday called "amazing" Cheney's assertions that the Duelfer report justified rather than undermined Bush's decision to go to war, and he accused the Republican of using "convoluted logic."
Kerry, in a campaign appearance in Colorado, said: "The president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq."
A short time later, while campaigning in Wisconsin, Bush angrily responded to Kerry's charge he sought to "make up" a reason for war.
"He's claiming I misled America about weapons when he, himself, cited the very same intelligence about Saddam weapons programs as the reason he voted to go to war," Bush said. Citing a lengthy Kerry quote from two years ago on the menace Saddam could pose, Bush said: "Just who's the one trying to mislead the American people?"
Yes, he could have. We know for a fact he used chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds back in the 80s. We know he built a nuclear plant at Osirak that was going to process enriched uranium for a bomb until the Israelis took it out. You can be sure Saddam would have shared the know-how and technology with terrorists. We couldn't afford to wait til he had WMD for by then it would have been too late. President Bush acted to keep this country safe and that's the only judgment I trust, not some bureaucrat's attempts to rewrite history a mere four weeks before the election.
Yeah, Iraq played games and acted like they had something dangerous. Given the country was a totalitarian society, it would have been irresponsible to act other than to conclude Saddam's regime harbored hostile designs against the United States and its allies. We know Saddam invaded his neighbors twice. And he threatened to employ WMD against us when we came to the rescue of occupied Kuwait. I don't have to draw for an entire list of details to demonstrate the legitimacy of this war and the soundness of its rationale. The dangers were gathering and the President did the only thing a man in his position charged with protecting this country did. It is an act for which he owes no apology.
Clinton had one every other day
Clinton did not have one every other day.
This very article is based on President Bush's comments today so it doesn't seem your complaint stands up to scrutiny.
Now, does this extreme propaganda the media is engaging in need to be fought and he needs to ratchet up his appearances to speak directly to the people? Yes! We agree on that.
If President Bush had acted like Neville Chamberlain, I can't but feel that same bureaucrat would have come to the opposite conclusion today. <sarcasm
The report justifies the war.
Like I said; once again, the AP refuses to dig further than necessary to spew out "Bush lied", even when even the most-rudementary digging would give the lie to that.
Precisely. Everything in the history of Saddam's regime and his character told us he would not hesistate to use WMD against us. He already used them against the Iranians and the Kurds. He launched Scuds against Israel. We had an adversary whose intentions were menacing and who showed no regards for international law or morality would serve as a restraint on his ambitions. All of these are facts recorded by history. No less than Bill Clinton was sure about them. A single report does NOT change anything about what Saddam could do in the future and which I'm glad we made sure he can't have the means to do NOW. That is all that matters, when all is said and done.
Yes... the UN itself is complicit in helping Saddam to evade the sanctions that might have contained him and averted war. An issue the Michael Moore Left in America overlooks.
A negative does NOT prove the absence of a positive. We have a genuine mystery and this is one issue that may never be definitely settled to any one's satisfaction. DUH.
Pray for W and Our Troops
If President Bush wants to lose this election by NOT decisively defending the Iraq War, well it will be his fault. I'm not retreating and wavering in my conviction it was the right thing to do then and the right thing to do now.
My thoughts exactly, I would vote fr Dukakis before i would vote for Kerry! LOL At least Dukakis didn't call the troops war criminals... that i know of...
Good work. All of this disappears down the rabbit hole. Is the mainstream media rehabilitating Saddam now to help defeat President Bush? I wouldn't put it past them, especially after C-BS was caught using faked documents to cast doubt on the President's TANG service. The media is Kerry transcript service and they will go all out to help him until Election Day. If they have to lie about what went on in Iraq, so be it. Its not like C-BS' conduct is going to stop them.
Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.
This is the key right here. Saddam would have restarted his WMD program. As soon as sanctions were lifted he would have proceeded with them and the report itself noted the UN sanctions had collapsed by the end of 1999. One can in fact make a good argument the Duefler report bolsters rather than undermines the central premise of the Iraq War. But you wouldn't know that from the way the partisan media has mentioned the report, including omitting highlighting this critical and key sentence.
GOT IT. Thanks.
I pasted them all together and am trying to figure out how to send it to the entire earth.
I agree with you completely. But we may be trying to convince a DEMOCRAT administration to stay the course come January.
I hope I'm overreacting.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.