• Rusher’s column comments Rusher’s column comments By David Stewart In the Tuesday, January 27 issue of The Garden Island, William Rusher’s column attempted to explain how the President couldn’t possibly be blamed for the missing weapons of mass destruction.
• Rusher’s column comments
Rusher’s column comments
By David Stewart
In the Tuesday, January 27 issue of The Garden Island, William Rusher’s column attempted to explain how the President couldn’t possibly be blamed for the missing weapons of mass destruction. It’s a problem for all the hawks, who spent months justifying an attack based on the spectre of WMDs. They patiently explained UN resolution 1441, told us what was in the aerial photos, waved vials around, and painted a grim picture of what would happen when Saddam Hussein used his weapons. They bluffed Congress, sighed at the obviously uninformed protestors, laughed at jokes about the French and brushed aside objections of a thin pretext for war with promises of top-secret intelligence. President Bush swaggered and clenched his jaw when he delivered his tough ultimatums. They bet the house on Saddam’s WMDs.
Now we are expected to believe that because Saddam was both especially tricky and pathetically deluded, he misled Bush. Or maybe it was the darn CIA. Or it was (and I can’t believe they say this without laughing) Clinton’s fault. I must have missed that part where the US listened to anything Saddam said. Was our secret intelligence straight from the Iraqi Information Minister? Bush can blame the CIA too, and he’s probably not entirely wrong. It’s an organization that has had some spectacular failures, including missing the Sept. 11th attacks. But the CIA doesn’t decide when to go to war; Bush does. He can see all the evidence, examine their conclusions and decide whether it merits going to war. Notice that the Bush administration still publically believes all the evidence they showed us, and steadfastly defends even the 16 words about Nigerian nuclear materials.
As for Bush merely following along in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, that’s ridiculous. But I noticed that Rusher skipped over one part of the David Kay interview. Kay credits a strike ordered by Clinton for destroying the few remaining traces of WMDs. At the time, the right wingers dismissed this as a political ploy, ‘wagging the dog’. Of course Clinton and his administration believed Saddam had WMDs. At the time they did, and Clinton helped destroy them. Maybe that’s when Colin Powell got the idea that Saddam wasn’t a threat, which he stated clearly in an interview pre-Sept. 11.
The consequences of Bush’s blunder? A costly war and an even costlier peace, in terms of lives and money. All the countries that refused to support us know they were right, and the countries that did support us probably regret it. We burned our bridges with the UN as well. The Iraqi people will probably benefit as we try to leave Iraq a little better than we found it. But it already looks like Bush is in a hurry to declare victory (again), just in time for the election. Setting up a credible responsible Iraqi government is not a job that can be rushed, and it’s the only way for Bush to atone for his mistakes.
David T. Stewart is a resident of Lihu‘e
