Kurt Nicklas
2008-06-16 22:14:12 UTC
{The mainstream media is slowly coming to the realization that most of
what the Bush-hating, nutroot Left
has been saying about Iraq for years has been hogwash. No surprise
there.}
The administration simply got bad intelligence. Critics are wrong to
assert deception.
By James Kirchick
June 16, 2008
Touring Vietnam in 1965, Michigan Gov. George Romney proclaimed
American involvement there "morally right and necessary." Two years
later, however, Romney -- then seeking the Republican presidential
nomination -- not only recanted his support for the war but claimed
that he had been hoodwinked.
"When I came back from Vietnam, I had just had the greatest
brainwashing that anybody can get," Romney told a Detroit TV reporter
who asked the candidate how he reconciled his shifting views.
Romney (father of Mitt) had visited Vietnam with nine other governors,
all of whom denied that they had been duped by their government. With
this one remark, his presidential hopes were dashed.
The memory of this gaffe reverberates in the contemporary rhetoric of
many Democrats, who, when attacking the Bush administration's case for
war against Saddam Hussein, employ essentially the same argument. In
2006, John F. Kerry explained the Senate's 77-23 passage of the Iraq
war resolution this way: "We were misled. We were given evidence that
was not true." On the campaign trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton dodged
blame for her pro-war vote by claiming that "the mistakes were made by
this president, who misled this country and this Congress."
Nearly every prominent Democrat in the country has repeated some
version of this charge, and the notion that the Bush administration
deceived the American people has become the accepted narrative of how
we went to war.
Yet in spite of all the accusations of White House "manipulation" --
that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al
Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction --
administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to
distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly
propagating falsehoods.
In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a
report acknowledging that it "did not find any evidence that
administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure
analysts to change their judgments." The following year, the
bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found "no indication that
the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction."
Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee
report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican
staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release
announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got
in this familiar shot: "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation
into war under false pretenses."
Yet Rockefeller's highly partisan report does not substantiate its
most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that "top
administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked
Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a
role in 9/11." Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al
Qaeda links were "substantiated by intelligence information." The same
goes for claims about Hussein's possession of biological and chemical
weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons
program.
Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war
critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of
deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend
they were "misled" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.
In 2003, top Senate Democrats -- not just Rockefeller but also Carl
Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others -- sounded just as alarmist.
Conveniently, this month's report, titled "Whether Public Statements
Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by
Intelligence Information," includes only statements by the executive
branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the
Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees -- who
have access to the same intelligence information as the president and
his chief advisors -- many senators would be unable to distinguish
their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.
This may sound like ancient history, but it matters. After Sept. 11,
President Bush did not want to risk allowing Hussein, who had twice
invaded neighboring nations, murdered more than 1 million Iraqis and
stood in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, to remain
in possession of what he believed were stocks of chemical and
biological warheads and a nuclear weapons program. By glossing over
this history, the Democrats' lies-led-to-war narrative provides false
comfort in a world of significant dangers.
"I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in
South Vietnam to stop communist aggression in Southeast Asia," Romney
elaborated in that infamous 1967 interview. That was an intellectually
justifiable view then, just as it is intellectually justifiable for
erstwhile Iraq war supporters to say -- given the way it's turned out
-- that they don't think the effort has been worth it. But predicating
such a reversal on the unsubstantiated allegation that one was lied to
is cowardly and dishonest.
A journalist who accompanied Romney on his 1965 foray to Vietnam
remarked that if the governor had indeed been brainwashed, it was not
because of American propaganda but because he had "brought so light a
load to the laundromat." Given the similarity between Romney's
explanation and the protestations of Democrats 40 years later, one
wonders why the news media aren't saying the same thing today.
what the Bush-hating, nutroot Left
has been saying about Iraq for years has been hogwash. No surprise
there.}
The administration simply got bad intelligence. Critics are wrong to
assert deception.
By James Kirchick
June 16, 2008
Touring Vietnam in 1965, Michigan Gov. George Romney proclaimed
American involvement there "morally right and necessary." Two years
later, however, Romney -- then seeking the Republican presidential
nomination -- not only recanted his support for the war but claimed
that he had been hoodwinked.
"When I came back from Vietnam, I had just had the greatest
brainwashing that anybody can get," Romney told a Detroit TV reporter
who asked the candidate how he reconciled his shifting views.
Romney (father of Mitt) had visited Vietnam with nine other governors,
all of whom denied that they had been duped by their government. With
this one remark, his presidential hopes were dashed.
The memory of this gaffe reverberates in the contemporary rhetoric of
many Democrats, who, when attacking the Bush administration's case for
war against Saddam Hussein, employ essentially the same argument. In
2006, John F. Kerry explained the Senate's 77-23 passage of the Iraq
war resolution this way: "We were misled. We were given evidence that
was not true." On the campaign trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton dodged
blame for her pro-war vote by claiming that "the mistakes were made by
this president, who misled this country and this Congress."
Nearly every prominent Democrat in the country has repeated some
version of this charge, and the notion that the Bush administration
deceived the American people has become the accepted narrative of how
we went to war.
Yet in spite of all the accusations of White House "manipulation" --
that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al
Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction --
administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to
distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly
propagating falsehoods.
In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a
report acknowledging that it "did not find any evidence that
administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure
analysts to change their judgments." The following year, the
bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found "no indication that
the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction."
Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee
report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican
staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release
announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got
in this familiar shot: "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation
into war under false pretenses."
Yet Rockefeller's highly partisan report does not substantiate its
most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that "top
administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked
Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a
role in 9/11." Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al
Qaeda links were "substantiated by intelligence information." The same
goes for claims about Hussein's possession of biological and chemical
weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons
program.
Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war
critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of
deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend
they were "misled" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.
In 2003, top Senate Democrats -- not just Rockefeller but also Carl
Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others -- sounded just as alarmist.
Conveniently, this month's report, titled "Whether Public Statements
Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by
Intelligence Information," includes only statements by the executive
branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the
Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees -- who
have access to the same intelligence information as the president and
his chief advisors -- many senators would be unable to distinguish
their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.
This may sound like ancient history, but it matters. After Sept. 11,
President Bush did not want to risk allowing Hussein, who had twice
invaded neighboring nations, murdered more than 1 million Iraqis and
stood in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, to remain
in possession of what he believed were stocks of chemical and
biological warheads and a nuclear weapons program. By glossing over
this history, the Democrats' lies-led-to-war narrative provides false
comfort in a world of significant dangers.
"I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in
South Vietnam to stop communist aggression in Southeast Asia," Romney
elaborated in that infamous 1967 interview. That was an intellectually
justifiable view then, just as it is intellectually justifiable for
erstwhile Iraq war supporters to say -- given the way it's turned out
-- that they don't think the effort has been worth it. But predicating
such a reversal on the unsubstantiated allegation that one was lied to
is cowardly and dishonest.
A journalist who accompanied Romney on his 1965 foray to Vietnam
remarked that if the governor had indeed been brainwashed, it was not
because of American propaganda but because he had "brought so light a
load to the laundromat." Given the similarity between Romney's
explanation and the protestations of Democrats 40 years later, one
wonders why the news media aren't saying the same thing today.