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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (22037)	7/13/2003 11:37:38 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Truth Time on Iraq ________________________ by Jules Witcover Published on Friday, July 11, 2003 by the Baltimore Sun With the wheels threatening to come off President Bush's nice, tidy liberation of Iraq, it's time for straight talk from him and his administration about how and why we got where we are and what we're going to do about it. On the first point, we're still getting dodges from the president on how he sold the war to Congress. Despite a White House admission that in his State of the Union address he mentioned a discredited report of Iraqi efforts to buy nuclear weapons fuel, Mr. Bush still dismisses questions about the matter as "attempts to rewrite history." Asked in South Africa the other day whether he still believed the charge, he ducked, observing instead that "there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to world peace." The president's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, has acknowledged that the discredited information, judged by the CIA at the time to have been based on forged documents, "should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech." Does that mean it would have been OK to put it out at a lower level to advance the argument for going to war? Talk about rewriting history. Such bobbing and weaving by Mr. Bush is in keeping with his peddling "regime change" as the prime justification for his invasion after most of the rest of the world wouldn't buy into an imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction. And with the failure to find them, he continues that other rationale. On the second point of where we go from here in Iraq, we finally started getting some straight talk the other day via the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings. Insistent senators dragged from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the war is costing an estimated $3.9 billion a month, nearly twice the original guess, not including funds needed for reconstruction of the occupied country. At the same hearing, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the Iraq invasion, said the 145,000 American forces there now aren't likely to be reduced "for the foreseeable future." So much for the rosy pre-invasion fantasies of a quick in-and-out, leaving grateful Iraqis in its wake, rather than more U.S. casualties. The hearings also focused on the price the administration is paying for thumbing its nose at its reluctant traditional allies and waging the war without them. When Mr. Rumsfeld was asked whether France and Germany had been solicited to send peacekeeping forces to Iraq after the main combat ended, the defense secretary said, amazingly, "I'll have to ask." After checking, he reported back that such a request had been made in December, long before the two allies had voiced their strong opposition to a U.S.-British invasion. But he said he had "no idea" whether they had been asked for such help since then. Mr. Rumsfeld, famed for his deft (some would say contemptuous) dismissal of daily queries from the Pentagon press corps, found the Senate interrogators harder to sidestep. Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan later expressed incredulity that Mr. Rumsfeld didn't know whether the French and Germans were even asked to assist in the peacekeeping once the major shooting stopped. He shouldn't have been surprised, knowing that the administration had pretty much hung out a "No Help Wanted" sign to the coalition of the unwilling that had balked in the first place. As Oliver Hardy used to say to his hapless partner, Stan Laurel, "Here's another fine mess you've got us into." But now that we're in it, the nation's political leaders - Republicans and Democrats alike, supporters and opponents of the invasion alike - need to focus on getting out of it at the least cost in American lives and prestige. The political fallout at home can be assessed later. With the president and his administration increasingly in a defensive posture, however, and with Democrats in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail increasingly critical, the prospect is for more politicking on the war, not less. Jules Witcover writes from The Sun's Washington bureau. Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun commondreams.org