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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (412304)	6/6/2003 5:45:11 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

MOLLY IVINS on the Orwellian Doublethink of the Bushies: dfw.com <SNIP> Safire's recent column about "hyping the 'hoax' charge" is the most elegant of its kind: Suddenly those who ask, "So where are these weapons of mass destruction we went to war to over?" are the problem. In Safire's parallel universe, the problem is not that we're not finding weapons of mass destruction -- which means that either we were lied to by the Bush administration or there was a massive intelligence failure. No, that's not the problem at all. The problem is, rather, that the people asking the question are "the crowd that bitterly resents America's mission to root out the sources of terror" and are "whipping up its intelligence hoax hype." Got that? If you ask, "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?" -- a fairly obvious question at this point -- you are the problem.

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (412304)	6/6/2003 6:59:41 PM
From: CYBERKEN	Respond to of 769667

I guess your bio-classification is "red cockroach". But don't worry, it's such a big group you won't be noticed...

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (412304)	6/6/2003 7:18:51 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 769667

BUSH: "The Broken Trust" What is not acceptable is for a free government to mislead its own people to bring them around to supporting a war. The people who should worry most about the credibility gap are those who support Bush's foreign policy. workingforchange.com E.J. Dionne, Jr. Washington Post 06.06.03 The broken trust Without evidence or explanation for Iraq, how will U.S. rally world support against a real threat? WASHINGTON--It would seem an ungracious moment to challenge the Bush administration on whether it hyped the evidence to push Americans into endorsing the war in Iraq. After all, one core claim of the war's supporters was vindicated on Wednesday when Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian counterpart, committed themselves to the president's pathway to peace. Defenders of the war always said that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would change the political dynamics of the Middle East. In the short term, at least, they have been proved right. For the Bush administration's champions, such results--and the simple fact that a wretched dictatorship has been overthrown--should be enough. Those who insist on holding the administration accountable for the claims it made before the war, Bush allies say, are churlish losers. The president's friends at The Wall Street Journal editorial page noted that the war's opponents are so upset about Bush's success that they “are now trying to make a war crime out of the fact that the allies haven't yet found weapons of mass destruction.” But the president's defenders have it exactly backward. The people who should worry most about the credibility gap are those who support Bush's foreign policy. If no weapons are found, and if the administration does not come clean about why it said what it said before the war, America's ability to rally the rest of the world against future threats will be greatly weakened. So will the president's ability to rally his own nation. Citizens in a democracy accept deceiving an enemy during war. What is not acceptable is for a free government to mislead its own people to bring them around to supporting a war. Whether the administration likes it or not, that is the suspicion it now confronts. And while the Bush team rarely listens to its opponents, it might consider paying attention to rumblings in Congress and the warnings coming even from those who supported the president on Iraq. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, still thinks the United States was right to fight the war. Under U.N. resolutions and the peace agreement after the 1991 Gulf War, he says, the burden was on Saddam “to prove that he had destroyed what the U.N. Security Council acknowledged he possessed, as certified by the U.N. weapons inspectors.” But Biden says the administration damaged itself by “hyping” the imminence of the threat from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and of his links with al Qaeda, and by greatly exaggerating his nuclear threat. That makes it all the more urgent for the administration to either find the weapons or explain why it can't. “I think that unless they find what was documented before, or something in addition to that, I think our credibility is damaged among our friends and we've given significant political ammunition to our enemies,” Biden said in an interview. “There's no question,” adds Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, “that the government's credibility is at issue on weapons of mass destruction, given the very strong statements of the president and the vice president” and members of the Cabinet. “Where are they?” Hagel, like Biden, does not rule out the possibility that the weapons will be found. But both senators dismissed the president's claim that the discovery of two trailers allegedly used for weapons production proves that, as the president put it, “we have found the weapons of mass destruction.” The president referred to those labs again when he addressed American troops in Qatar on Thursday. But this time, he seemed to acknowledge the need for more convincing proof. “You know better than me he's got a big country to hide them in,” Bush told the troops. “We're on the look. We'll reveal the truth.” The truth--unvarnished and unspun--is exactly what's required. “I'm not accusing anyone of anything right now,” Hagel said on Thursday, “but we have to get the facts out.” Maybe the weapons will turn up. Or perhaps the administration figures it can just ride out this challenge, as it has so many others since 9/11, and move on to other things. But as Hagel says, “the coin of the realm for everything in life, but especially for government and politics, is trust.” That dictum applies even to superpowers. Two trailers and the fact that Iraq is big country may cut it with the president's base, but not with the rest of the world.