The dilemma facing Democrats
By WILLIAM RUSHER
Wednesday, December 17, 2003 9:24 AM CST
By dragging Saddam Hussein out of his hidey-hole in a farm hut south of Tikrit, the 4th Infantry Division has inflicted a severe blow to the Democrats' thesis that everything is going badly in Iraq. Counting the number of schools that have reopened has never been a very convincing response to the almost daily reports of one or two American soldiers killed by terrorists. But the capture of Saddam is a devastating blow to the whole concept of resistance to the American occupation of Iraq, and here at home it will force the Democrats to fall back on less vulnerable ways of criticizing President Bush.
One way, which the Democrats have been testing gingerly in recent weeks, is to charge that Bush simply tricked America into attacking Iraq. Rob Reiner, the noisily liberal actor, put it succinctly in introducing Howard Dean to a Democratic audience in Iowa recently: "George Bush said we had to go into Iraq because it had weapons of mass destruction. He lied."
Reiner is peddling the theory that Iraq never had any weapons of mass destruction, or had destroyed them before the American attack in March, and that Bush knew it. Since no caches of such weapons have yet been found, the charge has at least a superficial plausibility. All we need to do, to make it mesh with the known facts, is assume that Bush is a liar.
But before Democratic orators follow Reiner down that seductive path, they had better look over their shoulder and notice what prominent Democrats were saying, according to media sources, just a few years ago:
"We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program," President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998.
"(T)he risk that the leaders of (Iraq) will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security risk we face," Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Feb. 18, 1998.
"(We) urge you ... to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs," Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Tom Daschle, Carl Levin, John Kerry and others, Oct. 9, 1998.
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction," Sen. Ted Kennedy, fall, 2002.
"We know (Saddam) has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country," Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has ... a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction," Sen. Bob Graham (chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee), Dec. 8, 2002.
Now, when President Bush made exactly the same charges in justifying our attack on Iraq, there were just three possibilities. Either (1) the above Democrats were conscious liars, and Bush was just a belated joiner of their conspiracy, or (2) they were misled by faulty intelligence, and there is no reason to suppose Bush wasn't just as misled as they were, or (3) they were, and still are, right about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (as, on this theory, time will in due course demonstrate), and so was, and is, President Bush.
In short, whatever theory the Democrats adopt to justify the above-quoted statements of their highest and best-informed leaders will serve equally well to justify Bush.
How about it, ladies and gentlemen, what's your choice?
William Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.
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