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Posted on 07/16/2003 11:30:36 PM PDT by FairOpinion
Whatever you think about George Bush, whomever you'd prefer to see in the Oval Office come 2005, this much is clear: What the President said in his State of the Union address was accurate.
British intelligence analysts did believe that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa. British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he believed it then - and that he believes it now, based on sources "independent from that of the U.S."
That doesn't mean there's no problem with what Bush said. But the problem hasn't to do with honesty. It has to do with whether a president, in a major speech, should cite foreign intelligence reports that his own intelligence analysts cannot independently confirm. National Security Advisor Condi Rice and Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet say that shouldn't have happened.
Fine. But let's not forget what we know.
We know Saddam had chemical weapons -- he used them against the Kurds in the late 1980s, and there is evidence suggesting he may have used them as recently as 1998 in his ethnic cleansing campaign against the Marsh Arabs.
We know he had biological weapons -- he admitted that, after one of his son-in-laws defected and spilled the beans. Nevertheless, Saddam refused to turn over his bio weapons to UN inspectors.
We know he had a nuclear WMD program. If the Israelis hadn't bombed his nuclear facilities in 1981, Saddam would have constructed a nuclear weapon in that decade. If not for the Gulf War, he would have managed to reconstitute his program in the 1990s. At the end of the Gulf War, in 1991, we found he was further along on nuclear weapons production than the CIA had believed.
In September 2002, the International Institute of Strategic Studies (www.iiss.org ) estimated that Saddam could assemble nukes "within months" -- if he got his hands on "fissile material from foreign sources." That's why British and other reports of Saddam seeking uranium had to be taken seriously - and seen as frightening.
It's OK to take a hard look at what the President said, at what he knew and didn't know based on our current intelligence-gathering capabilities. It's justified to say that our intelligence-gathering capabilities need to be sharply upgraded. What is not OK is for those who opposed US military intervention in Iraq to create a tempest in an English tea pot in an effort to produce buyer's remorse in the American public.
Over this weekend, for example, the D.C. Anti-War Network held a rally "to repeal the USA Patriot Act and end U.S. occupation of Iraq." According to the Washington Post, the rally's official speakers said that "America's troubles can be tied to the government's 'blind support for Israel.'"
Facts are stubborn things. And the facts remain that Saddam was a brutal dictator who slaughtered more Muslims than any individual in world history. He had programs to develop WMD and he had used WMD in the past. He had attacked his neighbors, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel among them. He had attempted to assassinate a former U.S. President. He regarded America as his enemy and he had sworn revenge. He violated the terms of the 1991 ceasefire and 17 UN Security Council resolutions -- thereby challenging us to uphold whatever shred of credibility remained in the international community's deterrence of rogue states.
If Saddam wasn't seeking uranium to make bombs, he could have established that by cooperating with the inspectors - for example by allowing his nuclear scientists to leave Iraq for questioning, and turning over centrifuges and other hidden weapons-building components. He refused to do so.
Based on all these facts, President Bush was right to use force against Saddam. He understood that in the past we had too often underestimated our enemies' capabilities and intentions. Too often, our intelligence tended towards wishful thinking, rather than considering worst-case possibilities.
The President decided unless Saddam made a dramatic change in his behavior, he would have to be dislodged from power. We could not afford to let him continue to play cat and mouse with UN weapons inspectors while he improved his ability to hide his weapons programs from the world.
For all these reasons, the President took America to war and most Americans supported him. Whatever you think about George Bush, whoever you'd prefer to see in the White House in 2005, those are the facts.
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But, since the RATs and their friends know the uranium charge is a lie out of the box, what does it matter?
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