WONDER LAND
Why Do Dems
Call Bush a Liar?
They endanger the country by personalizing the Iraq issue.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, February 20, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
"He lied in Florida. He's lied several times. I believe he lied in Iraq."--Al Sharpton
"Certainly the integrity and character of the president of the United States is at issue, no question."--John Edwards
"Congress must censure President Bush for misleading the country about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."--MoveOn.org
"He denied leading the nation to war under false pretenses."--ABC News
In the increasingly out-of-body experience that has become politics and the news about politics in America, it is getting harder than ever to separate fact from fiction. This matters, because the facts could kill us.
In the past week, stories about what President Bush knew about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have been appearing almost literally alongside stories of the efforts by many nations to produce or acquire a nuclear bomb.
Many Americans now believe, on the basis of repetition unto brainwashing, that President Bush more or less made up his reasons for going to war in Iraq, that his assertions about the Iraqi threat were fiction. This is why John Edwards, a U.S. senator, is willing to say the president's "integrity" as commander-in-chief is a legitimate election issue.
Simultaneously, A.Q. Khan, the "Father" of Pakistan's A-bomb, has become the world's most famous Asian. Khan stole the information needed to build a nuclear bomb for Pakistan. He entered the global marketplace, the "community of nations," and bought the highly engineered materials needed to manufacture the bomb: "They literally begged us to buy their equipment." He then went into business, until recently, selling atomic-bomb expertise to other nations. No one believes Khan is making any of this up.
The stories the past fortnight about Khan have revealed that the nations identified as having participated between about 1970 and a moment ago in the global Get-A-Bomb market include acquirers such as Pakistan, Iran, Libya and North Korea and a long list of witting or unwitting enablers, such as Russia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates (Dubai), South Korea, the U.S., Britain, the Netherlands and Japan.
We have learned, for instance, that on a nondescript street in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, sits Scomi Precision Engineering, a mere dot in the high-tech ocean that happens to be capable of producing parts usable in centrifuges, which separate the heavier nuclear U-238 isotope from the lighter, bomb-required U-235 isotope. In August, crates of Scomi parts were seized enroute to Libya.
But what about Iraq? In this country's increasingly admit-nothing style of politics, one might conclude from listening to the Democratic presidential candidates that Iraq is on Mars, that its role in any of this obviously real global trade for weaponized nuclear technology was minimal or had become nothing, and so President Bush's reasons for replacing the Saddam Hussein regime were a "pretense," "made up," a "distortion," and a "lie."
Americans are entitled to believe all of this if they wish, even in good faith. And our political establishment is entitled to spend the next eight months of the election debating how many angels danced on the head of Mr. Bush's intelligence estimates. And the Democrats may sustain a strategy to dismantle and demolish the authority of an American president. But it may not be in the country's interest to do so, and given what we now know about rogue nations seeking rogue weapons, it is dangerous to do so.
It allows the believers in presidential mendacity--an increasing share of the electorate, which is the purpose of the Edwards-like charges--to become convinced that Iraq was never a serious player in the nuclear-bomb game. If you can talk yourself into believing Iraq was not a threat, you can, as easily, minimize the importance of other real threats.
This past Monday the Sundance Channel, of all places, aired a remarkable 2002 documentary called "Stealing the Fire," which detailed Iraq's ability to acquire uranium-processing equipment from Germany, one of the European "allies" we are supposed to have offended by not waiting for them to join us against Saddam. Heinz Schaab, who admitted to selling German-made centrifuge equipment to Saddam, was tried in Germany, found guilty and sentenced--to five years probation. The film makes clear that Schaab was not alone, that the civilized world is full of businessmen willing to service Saddam, Khan, Kim Jong Il or anyone with cash flow.
Here, from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, is a recent description of Iraq's nuclear program in the 1990s and before, based on U.N. inspection reports: "Iraq claimed that it gave no serious consideration to the simpler, gun-type uranium bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima. Iraq ran the computer codes pertinent to these designs on a Japanese NEC 750 computer located at Tuwaitha, which was moved to the National Computer Center after the Gulf war [emphasis added]. Iraq also experimented with high explosives to produce implosive shock waves and developed a 32-point electronic firing system using detonators developed at Al Qaqaa."
The Bush decision to invade Iraq was a judgment call. It raises important questions about inevitability, imminence, pre-emption and Americans' understanding of the world after what happened on September 11. It was the option that the Bush presidency chose to thwart a world of terrorism and trade in WMD technology. That is fair game for a serious vote. And indeed Democrats such as Madeleine Albright have written long, learned articles in Foreign Affairs and elsewhere taking issue with the Bush strategy.
But rather than engage at this level, the Democratic candidates and their coterie have chosen to dismantle and demolish Mr. Bush's personal integrity. The Democrats--and especially John Kerry, if he is serious about succeeding to this office--need to get on-issue and off George Bush personally because the course they are on diverts the electorate from the seriousness of what's at stake. It also reduces the authority of the country's leadership at a dangerous moment and diminishes one other national institution: the Democratic Party.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com. |
