Posted on 11/19/2005 5:51:30 PM PST by neverdem
It is said that a big lie can work if it is repeated often enough. For weeks, leading Democrats have been hammering away at the Big Lie that George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Starting on Veterans Day, Bush, Dick Cheney, and others in the administration embarked on a "pushback," arguing that Bush--and many leading Democrats, including some now part of the Big Lie campaign--accurately characterized the intelligence at the time.
Bush, Cheney, and the administration have the truth on their side. Exhaustive and authoritative examinations of the prewar intelligence, by the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004, by the Silberman-Robb commission in 2005, and by the British commission headed by Lord Butler, have established that U.S. intelligence agencies, and the intelligence organizations of leading countries like Britain, France, and Germany, believed that Saddam Hussein's regime was in possession of or developing weapons of mass destruction--chemical and biological weapons, which the regime had used before, and nuclear weapons, which it was working on in the 1980s.
To the charges that Bush "cherry-picked" intelligence, the commission cochaired by former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb found that the intelligence available to Bush but not to Congress was even more alarming than the intelligence Congress had. The Silberman-Robb panel also concluded, after a detailed investigation, that in no instance did Bush administration authorities pressure intelligence officials to alter their findings. Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. But Bush didn't lie about it. Some Bush supporters argue that the pushback now is a mistake, because it prevents the administration from focusing on events going forward. But the damage to Bush's credibility is real, and he needs to repair it to speak credibly about the future. At the same time, we must remember that the United States and our allies did not go to war solely because of weapons of mass destruction. There were other reasons, which Bush articulated at the time and which have been vindicated by events.
One of them was to remove from power one of the most brutal regimes on Earth. Mainstream media have enjoyed focusing on isolated prison abuses by U.S. forces and, in the past week, by Iraqis. (Have the media ever focused so closely on prison conditions in our past wars?) But these abuses are nothing compared with what the Saddam Hussein regime did every day. Rape rooms, prisoners fed into shredders, hundreds of mass graves: Do we really want to forget that the liberation of Iraq has vastly improved the lives of millions of people there?
Results. Another goal was to advance freedom and democracy in the Middle East--not just to help the people there but to change the mind-set of the region that produced the attacks of September 11. Before 2003, the dictators and authoritarian rulers of the region focused their peoples' inevitable discontent on the United States and Israel. Now the progress toward democracy in Iraq is leading Middle Easterners to concentrate on the question of how to build decent governments and decent societies. We can see the results--the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the first seriously contested elections in Egypt, Libya's giving up WMD s, the Jordanian protests against Abu Musab Zarqawi's recent suicide attacks, and even a bit of reform in Saudi Arabia. In Syria, the Washington Post' s David Ignatius reports, "People talk politics here with a passion I haven't heard since the 1980s in Eastern Europe. They're writing manifestos, dreaming of new political parties, trying to rehabilitate old ones from the 1950s."
Almost surely, none of this would have happened without the liberation of Iraq. And there democracy goes forward: Seventy-eight percent voted for the Constitution last month, and democratic parties are contesting the elections to be held next month. Against this backdrop, mainstream media headlined the call for U.S. withdrawal by Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who has long been skeptical of the war in Iraq. The propagators of the Big Lie against President Bush are trying to delegitimize not only him but also all the progress that has been made as a result of Iraq, progress both toward freedom for Middle Easterners and toward a Middle East that will no longer threaten the United States.
The link from my last post doesn't take you to the article mentioned in the title, but this one should.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051128/28barone.htm
I love Barone...and I know you do too..
No "Bump" has ever been more worthy! Thank you, Mr. Barone and thanks to you, neverdem for sharing this with us. Excellent post, excellent.
U.S. News and World Report is about as MSM as they get. Often referenced as a "leftist rag" in some circles. Copies are available in print at most any newspaper/magazine outlet.
Thanks for the ping . . . Barone's one of the best!!
I figured out that I haven't gotten the 11/28/05 issue yet, so forget what I commented on in my earlier posts. Mea culpa.
I wonder if it isn't time for GWB to go to Congress and speak in *prime time* to a national audience and lay out his whole case. I think it would be smart move.
Yes, Michael Barone is in the print edition every week.
Maybe call a special session during the break to lay out the case, speak to the nation, and force a vote recognizing the results of the various committees that have looked into the matter, and a resolution to stay the course.
It's an odd mix of balanced, liberal-leaning and conservative. John Leo writes every week about the stupidities of political correctness. Michael Barone has a weekly conservative column. But the lead articles and cover photos are often left-sensationalist. The readers and letters to the editor usually complain loudly when it goes too far in either direction. The publisher, Mortimer Zuckerman, is an issues guy. He supports Bush on many issues and not on others. As a long-time subscriber, I find it very frustrating, and wish it would be more consistent in reporting without slanting either way.
The big lie if accepted and not refuted, enters the history books as truth. There is a Brit term for a false historical account: a "Tony Pandy" (sp?)
I think he will, in due time, unless events and new revelations outpace him. I am personally not very satisfied with the "relied on flawed, but universally believed intelligence" defense. Show the WND really did, and do, exist!
To belive otherwise is to believe, not only that every intelligence service of every country, plus the UN, that investigated the matter was dead wrong -- one must also believe, preposterously, that old Saddam himself was fooled into thinking he had them. Doesn't take a genius to say, "Gosh, maybe he had them and got rid of them in the 6 months interval when he knew we were going to invade." No need for a convoluted story about unending intelligence screw ups and how Saddam didn't have a real grip on his military research programs. Yeah, sure. Tell me another whopper, fat Ted. Or have another Whopper, along with that gin and tonic. (Or do the Kennedeys drink only whiskey? I forget.)
Bill Gertz: Photos point to removal of weapons [Iraqi Arms Update 10/29/04]
U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained satellite photographs of truck convoys that were at several weapons sites in Iraq in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched, defense officials said yesterday. The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."
--snip--
The photographs bolster the claims of Pentagon official John A. Shaw, who told The Washington Times on Wednesday that recent intelligence reports indicate Russian special forces units took part in a sophisticated dispersal operation from January 2003 to March 2003 to move key weapons out of Iraq.
Date line for article is 11-28, I would think print edition.
Great article.
dittos
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