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

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (531905)	1/29/2004 11:14:04 AM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769670

Those pesky weapons of mass destruction January 29, 2004 David Kay's statement, in a recent interview with the New York Times, that he now doubts Saddam Hussein had any large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction marks an important milestone in the search for these famous but curiously missing devices. Kay is the highly respected former U.N. inspector commissioned by the CIA to conduct the search, and his conclusion deserves respect. It does not, however, put the matter to rest, for it leaves open at least two possible theories: (1) that Saddam, having destroyed many of his existing WMDs at the United Nations' behest after the first Gulf War, voluntarily eliminated other concealed weapons out of fear of U.N. inspections, and never thereafter developed a major program to replace them. Although, owing to the growing chaos and corruption in his regime – he was probably deceived into believing he had, and wound up making the world think so, too. Or, (2) that President Bush knew very well that Saddam had no WMDs, but tricked Congress and the American people into supporting an attack on Iraq by falsely alleging that he did. Option (1) is Dr. Kay's own theory. Option (2) is the nearly unanimous charge of the various candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Option (1) has the advantage of explaining a hitherto seemingly insuperable problem: Why on earth, if he had no WMDs, should Saddam encourage the suspicion that he did, and thereby provide justification for his regime's destruction, when he could easily have exploded the idea by granting unrestricted access to U.N. (or even American) inspectors? Dr. Kay's response is that, in the chaos and corruption of the regime's last years, not even Saddam knew the whole truth. The problem with the Democrats' option (2) is obvious. It depends upon everybody ignoring the fact that the idea that Saddam had WMDs wasn't invented by President Bush, but was a loudly proclaimed article of faith for every prominent Democrat in the Clinton administration while George W. Bush was still governor of Texas. To take just three examples: We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. – President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998 [Saddam] will use these weapons of mass destruction again, as he had 10 times since 1983. – Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, Feb. 18, 1998 Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies. – Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Nov. 10, 1999 If, therefore, President Bush wanted to deceive the American people into thinking Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, all he had to do was join a conspiracy already launched by the Clinton administration – a point no Democratic candidate is likely to stress. Ah, but the threat of Saddam using the WMDs wasn't "imminent," you say? Bush never said it was. On the contrary, he and his spokesmen always insisted that, if we waited until the threat was imminent, it would be too late. On the whole, therefore, option (1) seems the sounder bet. It lacks the elegant simplicity of option (2), but its depiction of the chaos and corruption of the later years of Saddam's regime carries a conviction all its own. Thus do dictators die – disoriented by their own lies. The whole question is important, in any case, because the belief that Saddam had WMDs and was willing to use them was always the Bush administration's only valid justification for the war. Liberating the Iraqi people was a fine bonus, but hardly a "vital interest" of the United States. If it turns out that Bush was mistaken in his belief, he had plenty of company – and America's intelligence agencies have a lot of explaining to do. worldnetdaily.com