| Saturday, November 12, 2005 |
| Once more, just for clarity |
Seems the right is pleased with GWB's forceful, Podhoretzian defense of the Iraq war this week. Seems the neocons and their fellow travelers like it when Bush is in "campaign mode." ... Too bad Bush's defense is so full of holes. From WaPo today:
President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.
Neither assertion is wholly accurate.
The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public statements.
But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions. [Wash Post, 11/11/05] In fact, the administration argument makes no sense, because they are essentially arguing that lawmakers are guilty of agreeing with the information they were given by the administration. Is their point that Congress should have disbelieved the White House? Actually, that's my argument, not theirs, because from day one, many of us civilians out here thought the Congress was too quick to cede its sole right to declare war, and were much too quick to believe the hoakum coming out of the Vice President's office, the NSA and the blinkered political appointee in charge of the CIA. Had the Congress more jealously guarded its prerogatives, and insisted that the assertions being made to it be backed up by more than just Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld's word, we might not have careened into an ill-planned, ill-advised, unnecessary war in Iraq.
Indeed the broad "Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq" signed by more than 100 members of Congress will go down in history as another act of self-sabotage by the branch of government that was founded to be preeminent among the three -- just a nother stinking Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which is and was a shame on the Congress.
That said, it was the president who chose to use the resolution -- which did not demand an ivasion, but which left him the lattitude to carry one out for only two purposes: "(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq." Iraq clearly posed no such national security threat, and it is becoming abundantly clear that the administration had reason to know that, and the United Nations never authorized, nor did it want, us to go to war to defend its resolutions.
The only question left for my money, is why on earth this is not broadly considered to be impeachable by the Congress. Maybe if Dubya had an affair with Saddam's sister...?
Tags: Iraq, Middle East, War, Terrorism, Foreign Policy, Bush |
posted by JReid @ 4:01 PM   |
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