Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Prewar intelligence

Commentary by David Reinhard


By DAVID REINHARD

David Reinhard

President Bush, at long last, has started defending himself. At a Veterans Day address, he stopped turning the other cheek and himself into a punching bag when called a liar. He started turning his critics' prewar words on prewar intel back on them, and the White House made clear the Veterans Day counterattack would not be a once-and-done salvo.

Bravo.

The counterattack will have to be sustained over time to be effective, and the early signs are that it can be effective. Those early signs? Cries that Bush is "questioning his critics' patriotism."

These claptrap cries always accompany any potent thrust or parry on the part of Bush and crew.

Did Bush say it's "unpatriotic to criticize the Iraq policy"? (Bob Schieffer, "Face the Nation") No, the president actually said it was "perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war." What he deemed "deeply irresponsible" is "to rewrite the history of how that war began" and make "baseless attacks."

If he touched on the issue of patriotism at all, he did so indirectly and without questioning anyone's patriotism in two sentences: "As our troops fight a ruthless enemy . . . they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough."

There's a phrase for such "leaders" who falter "when the going gets tough." They're sunshine patriots -- but patriots nonetheless.

The fact is that, since 9/11, we've seen far more Americans accusing other Americans of questioning their patriotism than we've seen Americans questioning other Americans' patriotism.

Playing these "patriot games" has become a default setting for Democrats and the left in any political or policy dispute. (See the Saxby Chambliss-Max Cleland campaign tiff over public employee unions and the homeland security bill, or the Democratic response to Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of John Kerry's voting record on defense.)

Let's see, the left spends months saying Bush lied us into the war using bogus intel, an impeachable offense. Bush finally responds by noting the Clinton administration, foreign governments and Democrats all said Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction. And Bush is questioning their patriotism?

Yes, but Bush took us to war on this intel. President Clinton did not. That's what Democrats such as Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Jay Rockefeller now argue. Yet they neglect something that figured in the thinking of the Bush administration and Iraq war advocates: the terror attacks of September 2001.

Here was the case in a nutshell: "Saddam's government has contact with many international terrorist organizations that likely have cells . . . in the United States. . . . I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after Sept. 11, that question is increasingly outdated. It is in the nature of these weapons, and the way they are targeted against civilian populations, that documented capability and demonstrated intent may be the only warning we get. To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? We cannot!"

This wasn't Bush, who never said Saddam was an "imminent threat." This was the Iraq-9/11 linking by Rockefeller in October 2002. (Hat tip to "Just One Minute" blogger Tom Maguire on this.) Of course, that was then. The West Virginia Democrat's Iraq war revisionism is now.

Again, this kind of historical revisionism isn't unpatriotic. It's simply low and dishonorable.

Samuel Johnson famously said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." If he were around today, he might be rewriting history or, at least, his quotation, since crying, "They're questioning our patriotism," is now the rage in some quarters.




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