Graham: Bush deceived the public over threat in Iraq
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BY FRANK DAVIES
The Miami Herald
Posted on Wed, Jun. 18, 2003
WASHINGTON - Sen. Bob Graham Tuesday appealed to centrist Democrats with a low-key call for fiscal responsibility and a hard-edged critique of President Bush that included an incendiary word: impeachment.
Graham, a Florida Democrat running for president, said he recently had seen ''Impeach George Bush'' buttons on the campaign trail.
He was asked in New Hampshire if Congress would impeach the president ''if in fact it was found there was manipulation of intelligence in order to create public support for the war'' in Iraq.
''My answer was no, but the American people will have an opportunity to collapse both steps -- impeachment and removal from office -- on the first Tuesday of November 2004,'' Graham told a couple hundred members of the New Democrat Network meeting in Washington.
Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, did not see an impeachable offense in the buildup to war, but accused the administration of ''deception and deceit'' in its foreign and domestic policies. ''We were sold on war with Iraq because of an imminent threat to the United States of weapons of mass destruction,'' he said. 'Now we can't find `Osama Bin Forgotten' or Saddam Hussein or those weapons.''
Democratic activists also heard Graham use a bit of generational history in his call to trim Bush's tax cuts in order to reduce growing deficits. He said when his father was born in 1885, each American's share of the national debt was $35.
When one of his grandchildren was born in 2000, Graham said, her share of the debt was $25,000.
''We have to speak out against the immorality of our generation passing along these expenditures to the next,'' he said.
The New Democrat Network raises money for moderate Democrats and has several links to Graham. He heads the New Democrat Coalition in the Senate, which includes about 20 Democrats.
The group also heard candidates Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who has also had strong centrist credentials; and, on tape, Sen. John Kerry and former Gov. Howard Dean.
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