Replies

Polls taken in March indicated that over 50% of the population thought that Saddam had engineered 9/11. That is not too surprizing, since the name of OBL had disappeared from the news at the time and only Saddam was mentioned. This is a classic propoganda technique.

And to set the record straight, I am not a liberal and could not tolerate any of the Demo candidates for president. I am a Libertarian and, as such, have no reason to show blind faith in Bush. I can look at the evidence and say that he was wrong without having to admit that I made a mistake in voting for him. I voted for Harry Browne in the election (though as a delegate to the Libertarian convention, I voted for another candidate).

You fellows are the one's that will have a problem next year. You will have to choose to vote for Bush, who will be a known liar for sure by then, a liberal Democrat that you hate, or a Libertarian.

Annual membership dues for the Libertarian Party is $25.

"I voted for Harry Browne in the election"

Thanks for letting us know who your soulmates are, with regard to the War on Terror, eg post 9/11/2001.

Browne came out of the Box after 9/11/2001 and BLAMED America. According to him, we DESERVED it.

You and Browne are apparently birds, feathers.

"I am a Libertarian ..."

It is NOT SAFE for those who love freedom to vote for a third party candidate because the result will be a DemocRAT in the White House appeasing terrorists again.

It is NOT SAFE for those who love freedom to vote DemocRAT.

It is NOT SAFE for those who love freedom to sit at home and not vote.

"Those who don't go all out to see to it that G.W.Bush is re-elected will be aiding and abetting America's enemies -- either indirectly, by not voting, or directly, by voting DemocRAT or Third Party.

America's enemies (at home and abroad) will applaud anyone who votes DemocRAT or for for ANY of the third party candidates other than Nader (who always takes some of the Commie/Marxist votes from DemocRATS).

If you are so clueless as to not be able to pick up on the significance of the fact that our enemies LOVE DemocRATS and other losers, and absolutely HATE and despise Bush and the Republicans, and why that is, then you are a threat to America's freedoms. You are either with us or against us and on the side of our enemies.

Abraham Lincoln: "Our greatest enemy is not beyond our shores, but the enemy within."

"...next year... Bush .. will be a known liar for sure by then..." ~ Mike4Freedom

No kidding? What sort of mentalities are you hoping to gain credibility with when you make such ludricrous, dogmatic statements about the future? You sound like the "prophecy" grifters on TBN/CBN. Hahahaha

Union Leader 6/30/03 Jonah Goldberg

Bush bashers should get facts straight before crying 'liar'

I HAVEN'T WRITTEN much about the ongoing brouhaha over whether President Bush "lied" America into the war with Iraq.

The main reason for my silence is that it's a monstrously stupid argument — and usually deliberately so.

But I have better reasons for my wait-and-see approach.

First, let's deal with the stupidity.

The really dumb argument is that Bush simply made up the whole thing. This line is rarely offered explicitly by serious people because it is so illogical.

But you will hear it alluded to by Democratic presidential candidates like Howard Dean or John Kerry who don't mind leaving the impression that Bush is a deceitful warmonger.

And you will certainly find this "idea" buzzing around the fever swamps of the left, mostly on the Internet.

The basic problem with this analysis is it requires that Bush knew the truth but said the opposite.

After all, a lie is only a lie if you know the truth and then say something very different.

So in this case, Bush needed to know something nobody had an inkling of.

As Kenneth Pollack, formerly on Bill Clinton's national security staff, recently noted in The New York Times, "At no point before the war did the French, the Russians, the Chinese or any other country with an intelligence operation capable of collecting information in Iraq say it doubted that Baghdad was maintaining a clandestine weapons capability."

The United Nations weapons inspectors reported time and again throughout the 1990s that Saddam had not disarmed.

The only time he could have disarmed was during the four-year period when no inspections took place.

No serious person thinks Saddam did that.

Even French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin admitted last November, "The security of the Americans is under threat from people like Saddam Hussein who are capable of using chemical and biological weapons."

In fact, Bush must have known Bill Clinton was wrong, too.

Either that, or Bill Clinton was a liar as well. Because in 1998, Bill Clinton spoke forcefully to the American people about the grave threat posed by Iraq's mounting chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

On Dec. 19, 1998, right after Bill Clinton was flouting the will of our allies and the U.N. by launching a military strike against the Iraqis, President Clinton told the American people in a televised address: "Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. ... Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. ... Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons."

The strike was wildly popular with most prominent Democrats at the time, most of whom — including Presidential candidates Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, and John Kerry — were strong Iraq hawks until a few months ago.

But according to the purist "Bush lied" school, not only was everyone wrong about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, but Bush secretly knew it and didn't say so.

Moreover, he was so convincing in his lies he was able to mislead Democratic leaders, veterans of the Clinton administration and the global intelligence community.

And you thought Reagan was an actor.

Now, there are intelligent anti-Bush arguments out there.

The most defensible, and therefore most serious, is that Bush exaggerated one threat or another, particularly the danger from Saddam's nuclear weapons program. It's certainly true that the White House was wrong to place so much credence on forged documents purporting to show Saddam was trying to purchase uranium in Niger.

But the more intelligent the criticisms of Bush become, the less useful they are for scoring cheap political points.

And that brings me to the main reason I've kept my tongue on this whole issue.

We don't know enough yet. Worse, every week something we thought we knew turns out not to be true.

Saddam's dead. No, he isn't. But Chemical Ali is dead. Oh wait, maybe he isn't. Baathists are heading to Syria. No, wait that's not true. The Baghdad Museum looting was the disaster of the millennium. Whoops, it was a minor problem. Recently at a British media forum, leading journalists admitted that the U.S. "attack" on the Palestine Hotel, which killed two journalists, was "overblown." Don't even get me started on Jessica Lynch.

More important, just this week we learned that an Iraqi scientist was ordered by Uday Hussein to keep vital parts and documents for a nuclear weapons program under a rose bush in his garden.

In a separate discovery, U.S. troops found scads of documents in a warehouse relating to various weapons programs.

And, they found 300 sacks of castor beans — the principal ingredient for the toxin ricin — which were conveniently mislabeled "fertilizer."

If Bush lied, we'll find out. And if he did, he should face the consequences. But because I'm not an opportunistic Democratic Presidential candidate or batty Bush-hating journalist, I don't mind waiting a few months to get my facts straight.

Jonah Goldberg is the editor of National Review Online, available at www.nationalreview.com