Bush lied.......?
Jun 15 '04 (Updated Jun 22 '04)
The Bottom Line Did Bush knowingly deceive us?
One of the many benefits of the Information Age is the sheer volume of theories to which the average citizen of the free world has instant access. With the click of a mouse, one can find a massive amount of opinions, ranging from plausible to bizarre, on any issue facing Western society.
Regarding the issue of the justification for forcing regime change in Iraq, opponents of George W. Bush’s policy can give you a number of “real” reasons for Bush’s war – that it was for oil, or to please his father, etc. Best-selling author Norman Mailer came up with a real howler, that we went to war “to boost the white male ego”.
Bush’s stated primary reason, of course, was that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and the willingness to use them. The failure of UN inspectors to find any stockpiles of anthrax or VX gas in the war’s wake has bolstered the argument that the president lied about Saddam having such weapons.
Let’s examine the idea that Bush “lied”. If he deliberately made a false accusation about Saddam’s possession of the WMDs, it naturally follows that Bush knew Saddam really didn’t have them. Consequently, Bush would have to realize that after Baghdad had been taken, the lie would eventually be discovered when inspection teams came up empty (unless he intended to plant WMDs inside the country, something he probably would have done by now, not to mention that such a conspiracy would require the assistance of a number of people, any one of whom might decide to spill the beans at any given time).
So, to believe one of these theories is to believe that President Bush executed a massive military campaign to topple a foreign government, putting thousands of people, military and civilian alike, at great risk. All this for something he knew was not only a falsehood, but a falsehood that would inevitably be laid bare, exposing him to everything from ridicule to loud calls for his impeachment.
Politically, residing over a war is a risky proposition for any president. Bush enjoyed vast support from the public during the war in Afghanistan (probably the best justification for military action since WWII). But the more complicated war in Iraq has hurt Bush profoundly, and could cost him a second term. With the economy rebounding, Iraq looks to be the primary issue in November.
So why would the president go to all this trouble for what he knew to be a lie, and knew that it would be exposed? There are three possible explanations:
1. Bush is a moron. This is the prevailing thought, of course, among journalists, university professors, and movie stars who barely squeaked past the 12th grade. George W. Bush has degrees from Harvard and Yale, and has flown fighter jets. These accomplishments require a person with some pretty good equipment upstairs. Moreover, if you’re truly an idiot running for president, you will not get past the primaries, much less the White House.
2. Bush is a lunatic. Again, we’ve never had a madman as president. We’ve had a few eccentrics (Teddy Roosevelt), a few paranoids (Nixon), and probably quite a few moral vacuums (Clinton), but never a true nutcase. Only a lunatic would achieve all that Bush has done in his life, only to go to war based on a lie so he can commit political suicide.
3. Bush acted on extraordinarily bad intelligence. This, to me, is the only reasonable conclusion. Given that our intelligence agencies spent the better part of two decades pouring money into satellites while letting their human intelligence assets (spies and field officers) wither away, this is not surprising. There are now reports that Saddam spent the year-long “rush” to war smuggling banned weapons out of the country, to Syria and Iran. The reason we didn’t know that at the time might have been….oh, maybe because of a lack of people on the ground. Director George Tenet planted the seeds of change at the CIA, in the hope that improvements in human intelligence could be made. Unfortunately, we may not see the effects of those changes for years to come.
Was war in Iraq justified? My answer is that I wasn’t sure then, and I’m not sure now (at least not unless we’re also willing to go to war with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria). What I am sure of is that it wasn’t based on a lie. Huge mistakes have been made, most notably in long deployments of National Guard and Reserve troops in place of full-time warriors. Regardless of the reasons and the errors, the genie is out of the bottle, and it would be insane to simply withdraw now, as some have suggested. We are bound by duty and common sense to see this campaign through to the end.
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