LoungeMachine
11-18-2005, 09:28 PM
Friday, November 18, 2005
Iraq Criticism: Fool us once ...
The Bush administration offers a bizarre defense against congressional critics of the war in Iraq who say he misled the country on the extent of the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States: They're disqualified from criticizing the administration's pre-war sales pitch because they bought it.
The argument's as cynical as it is circular.
"They spoke the truth then and they're speaking politics now," Bush says of congressional critics who voted to give him the authority to go to war.
The "truth" they spoke then was, of course, the truth according to Bush -- cooked intelligence assessments, fabrications by self-promoting exiles, "mushroom cloud" bogeymen and bogus allusions to 9/11.
What Congress gave Bush was an option, not an edict, to use military force against Iraq. What's overlooked in all the Democrats' earlier quotes about the potential threats that Saddam Hussein posed is that war was not the only option. It certainly was not the first choice for many of them. The other, obviously better, course was to continue the U.N. inspections program.
But the president insisted on war. The decision to exercise that authority was his and his alone. And good citizens, in Congress and out, have not only the right but also the responsibility to continue to question that decision and the grounds on which it was made.
Iraq Criticism: Fool us once ...
The Bush administration offers a bizarre defense against congressional critics of the war in Iraq who say he misled the country on the extent of the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States: They're disqualified from criticizing the administration's pre-war sales pitch because they bought it.
The argument's as cynical as it is circular.
"They spoke the truth then and they're speaking politics now," Bush says of congressional critics who voted to give him the authority to go to war.
The "truth" they spoke then was, of course, the truth according to Bush -- cooked intelligence assessments, fabrications by self-promoting exiles, "mushroom cloud" bogeymen and bogus allusions to 9/11.
What Congress gave Bush was an option, not an edict, to use military force against Iraq. What's overlooked in all the Democrats' earlier quotes about the potential threats that Saddam Hussein posed is that war was not the only option. It certainly was not the first choice for many of them. The other, obviously better, course was to continue the U.N. inspections program.
But the president insisted on war. The decision to exercise that authority was his and his alone. And good citizens, in Congress and out, have not only the right but also the responsibility to continue to question that decision and the grounds on which it was made.