Some Clarification Please
President Bush Should be Held to the Same
Standard
On Iraq to Which he Holds the Nation on Education
Blatant Attempt to Scare People
By KEVIN GADFLY
Contributing Writer for SanjHB.com
July 31, 2003
Since our President and his Administration are so high on accountability, it stands to reason that they should be held accountable for their own actions. This President has routinely asserted that public schools need to be held accountable for their success and failure. He has claimed that CEO’s need to be held accountable for their misdeeds. I believe this President needs to be held accountable for what he says to the American people and for the actions of his administration. There has been much attention to his misstatement in the State of the Union. I fully support an investigation into why those 16 words were inserted into the speech. I’m dismayed and puzzled as to why the senate voted against a bi-partisan resolution to investigate this matter. However, I believe there are many more instances of where this President needs to be held to the same high standards he holds for others.
A good place to start would be the 2000 election or the security breeches leading up to September 11th. However, I will begin with a speech he gave in October of 2002 in Cincinnati Ohio regarding the “threat” of Iraq. As of today, there has been no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, no evidence of nuclear capabilities, and no accurate link of Iraq to Al Qaeda. However, within his speech a form of the word terror was used 34 times! He referred to September 11th five times. In all fairness to the President he did provide some very “credible” evidence of a tie between Iraq and Al Qaeda within his speech. For instance he stated, “We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America.” Many people have common enemies, but that certainly doesn’t mean the share an alliance. Most Middle East scholars indicate that Osama Bin Laden considers Saddam Hussein an enemy. So does that make George and Osama partners?
President Bush also stated, “And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.” I seem to remember a formal statement from the Iraqi government denouncing the terrorist act. I’m sure that the statement was just a PR stunt and that Saddam probably didn’t shed any tears over the act. However, as intelligent as he is, I’m sure he knew that the long term implications of September 11th would be disastrous for him personally. There were likely portions of the world that celebrated the events of September 11th. Although this is sad and unfortunate it doesn’t constitute a valid reason for going to war with them. Another piece of evidence cited within the speech was that, “Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq.” Really? Which ones? And didn’t some also flee to the United States? Is this the evidence that Donald Rumsfeld asserts is “bullet proof” evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda?
President Bush used a form of the word nuclear 20 times in this October speech regarding Iraq. Recent intelligence and current events prove Iraq was not capable of nuclear weapons nor were they actively seeking nuclear materials. George mentioned, “Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don't know exactly, and that's the problem.” You don’t know exactly? Perhaps this is a problem you should solve before going to war? I’m sure that would be too complicated for Mr. Bush, hence the inclusion of my favorite line within his speech, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” What clear evidence of peril is he referring to? Clear evidence of peril is a very strong statement. It suggests that the U.S. faced an imminent devastating attack from Iraq. However, after several months of occupying Iraq there has been no evidence to verify that the U.S. faced peril. The inclusion of the mushroom cloud line is a blatant attempt to scare people. Intelligence reports in October of 2002 and now, both show this statement to be highly irresponsible and false.
He also stated, “Members of the Congress of both political parties, and members of the United Nations Security Council, agree that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must disarm. We agree that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons.” Why didn’t he include boogie men, asteroids, and dinosaurs? Did Saddam ever threaten us with “horrible poisons, diseases, gases, or atomic weapons?” He would likely have to possess them before he could ever threaten us with them. How do we know that Saddam doesn’t possess dinosaurs? I’m sure we could at least find fossils of dinosaurs or remnants of asteroids within Iraq. The same can’t be said of atomic weapons.
In a deliberate rhetorical maneuver, he used the word chemical 13 times, biological 11 times, and weapons of mass destruction 7 times within his speech. As previously mentioned, to this date we have yet to find any chemical or biological weapons that could be considered weapons of mass destruction. President Bush claimed Iraq at one time possessed “30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions.” This alleged stockpile has still not been accounted for, perhaps because it never existed. Besides, for it to be capable of killing millions, it would need to be deliverable. Iraq did not possess the weapons necessary to deliver that much anthrax.
A
Washington post article from July 21st also pointed out some
exaggerations from the October 7th 2002 Bush speech. They point
out the line "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide
a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual
terrorists,"..."Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to
attack America
without leaving any fingerprints." The
Washington post pointed out that
declassified portions of a still-secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
recently released by the White House show that at the time of the
President's speech the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility
to be unlikely. They were most concerned with the more likely possibility of
Saddam giving weapons to terrorists if he knew his removal would be
imminent.
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ON GADFLY:
My name is Kevin Gadfly. My real name and personal information is not only insignificant, but could possibly lead my detractors from keeping their eye on the ball. I prefer criticism to be directed at what I write, rather than at who I am. The purpose of my essays on SanjHB.com are to instigate debate on what I deem critical topics in today’s society. In the absence of absolute truth, my guess is as good as yours, so please feel free to respond in a critical manner. I have a certain world view that will definitely conflict with many others. My goal is not to proselytize, but to inspire debate regarding topics that I feel are too often left unexamined. I pledge to leave no stone left unturned and will refrain from being “politically correct.” My primary areas of interest are: language/rhetoric, war/conflicts, media, political apathy, and globalism.
"Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al Qaeda, . . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct," one key judgment of the estimate said. Mr. Bush should have mentioned this possibility within his speech. It is highly likely the American people would be less likely to support the war efforts if they were informed that the intelligence community believed Saddam posed the biggest threat if provoked.
Shouldn’t Mr. Bush and his cohorts be held accountable for all the lack of evidence they claimed to have? Towards the end of his speech he stated, “We refuse to live in fear.” This may be so, but it certainly doesn’t stop him from attempting to instill fear in the American people.
Speaking of accountability, his administration should be held accountable for their lack of accounting skills. A recent poll cited that roughly 50% of Americans approve of the way he is handling the economy? I shudder to think of what the state of the economy would be if 25% of Americans approved of his handling of the economy. His administration must be laughing at the modest standards they are held to in regards of the economy. In the two years he has held office the deficit picture has worsened by $789 billion. We went from a surplus of $334 billion to a deficit of $455 billion and roughly 3.6 million Americans have lost their job since 2001, yet still have half of all Americans favor the President's economic policies. Either half of all Americans have extremely low standards for the President or he has one hell of a spin team.
The Pentagon recently announced that the monthly bill they predicted for the occupation of Iraq was off nearly $2 billion a month and would cost $3.9 billion a month. Only an American president could have an accounting error of $2 billion a month and still keep their job. Although Mr. Bush is not the one who miscalculated the Iraq tab he must be held responsible for his Administration's errors. While it is nearly unanimous that President Bush and his Administration made major errors in their assessment of the threat Iraq posed, many people still say the military action was necessary. The argument is that the world is safer without Saddam Hussein. Certainly Mr. Hussein is an awful man, but is $4 billion a month of U.S. taxpayer money and the lives of hundreds of U.S. troops worth ridding the world of one man?