The following appeared in Tuesday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Bush isn't a liar; he believed Saddam had WMD
Philip Klein - For the Journal-ConstitutionTuesday, December 6, 2005
“One thing that never ceases to amaze me about the "Bush lied" crowd is that when it comes to Iraq, they ignore the fact that President Bush is a political animal. On other issues, they are quick to attribute Bush's actions to Rovian political calculations, but when it comes to Iraq, they pretend that the president has no interest in winning elections. …
Bush's critics would have us believe that in a desperate attempt to gain support for the war, he began to exaggerate intelligence and outright lie to make it seem as though Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But this requires believing that Bush knew that no WMD would be found in Iraq after the war. Why would Bush make false claims about WMD while advocating regime change --- the one policy that would conclusively prove that all of his claims were untrue?
It's one thing if Bush made a passing reference to WMD. But instead, his critics argue, he set himself up for further humiliation by making WMD the central rationale for the invasion of Iraq. As Bush's critics have reminded us, his administration spoke of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and exploited the image of a "mushroom cloud."
If Bush knew that these claims were false, why would he subject himself to global embarrassment with the 2004 presidential election approaching?
Viewed from a raw political perspective, the only explanation for Bush's prewar statements that makes sense is that Bush did believe that Saddam had WMD that would be found once he was toppled…..”
The first thing that came to mind when I read this was Adlai Stevenson’s contention that the very failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion was surely proof enough that the United States had not been behind it. Arguing about what Bush believed and when he believed it seems rather pointless at this juncture, since “believing” is often a willful act in and of itself. However, trying to make some sort of case for presidential ignorance or naïveté as a mitigating factor in the Iran-Contra fiasco didn’t really work out all that well for a cuddly old codger like Ronald Reagan, and let’s just say that “W”’s cuddle factor ain’t what it used to be and was never remotely Reaganesque to begin with.
In trying to divorce the Bush bunch’s orchestrated obsessiveness with WMD from “Rovian political calculations,” Mr. Klein ignores what seems to me a fairly bodacious and utterly cynical calculation : Once, as our decidedly un-cuddly VP confidently predicted, we had roared through Iraq like grain through a goose, our progress slowed only by the throngs of deliriously grateful natives determined to plant big wet kisses on our un-armored Hummers, and summarily dispatched Saddam to an eternally fiery and virgin-bereft reward, nobody would really give a damn about WMD’s one way or another. Had the premise for this calculation not proven sadly wrong, the calculation itself might have proven sadly correct.
