Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: lurqer who wrote (37641)	2/10/2004 10:08:15 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Well we had Buckley. How about Jesse? Bush still not coming clean on Iraq BY JESSE JACKSON President Bush went on ''Meet the Press'' to explain his policies in light of a continuing bloody and costly occupation in Iraq and a jobless recovery at home. He made his case largely without interruption from the respectful interviewer. But he once more misled the American people and gave them every reason to question his leadership. The president's major theme is that he is a ''wartime president.'' He used the word ''war'' more than 30 times in the interview, turning the horrors of Sept. 11 from a call to action to a catchall excuse: for a bad call on Iraq, for a bad economy, for a record budget deficit, for racking up unprecedented national debt. On the war, the president persists in misleading the American people. He admitted, grudgingly, that his inspectors couldn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But he insisted that rushing to war was justified anyway. After all, Saddam Hussein was a ''madman,'' a ''grave and gathering threat,'' and America's defense could not be based on ''trusting'' him. But that is a shameful distortion of the choice the president faced. Saddam wasn't a ''grave and gathering threat.'' He was, as United Nations inspectors had reported at the time, a diminishing and minor threat. Contrary to the president's claims at the time, he had no active nuclear weapons program, no weapon that could even reach these shores. The president claimed that he relied on the intelligence he had, but, contrary to what Bush said on Sunday, the CIA had reported that Saddam was hostile to the Sept. 11 terrorists, and wasn't about to give them weapons except if he faced ruin upon a U.S. invasion. Moreover, the choice wasn't to ''trust Hussein'' and do nothing or invade alone. U.N. inspectors were on the ground and pleading for more time, having discovered nothing. Iraq was under sanctions, export-import controls, air occupation and constant monitoring. Saddam's weapons capacity had been dismantled by U.N. inspections over the course of a decade. Bush says containment doesn't work with a madman, but containment, sanctions, inspections and air occupation had worked for more than a decade and had dismantled Saddam's arsenal. There was no imminent threat. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lied when he said, ''We know where the weapons are.'' Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell distorted and hyped the intelligence reports, alarming Americans with warnings about a ''mushroom cloud'' over America. We had time to build an international consensus for continued intensive inspection -- which Saddam was allowing -- or on the need to topple Saddam for defying the international community. If we had done so, we would have invaded with a true coalition. We would not have to bear the cost of the war -- now headed toward $200 billion -- ourselves. And most important, America's soldiers would not be at risk virtually alone, enforcing an occupation that lacks international legitimacy. In his rush to war, the president squandered the international support the United States had after Sept. 11, and made America more unpopular than ever in Europe, Asia and particularly among the Muslim countries. This is not water under the dam, for even on Sunday the president repeated his insistence that the United States reserves the right to attack anything it deems a threat ''before it becomes imminent.'' That embrace of aggressive war tramples the international law that U.S. administrations of both parties have worked to build over decades, and violates the spirit of America as a peace-loving nation. And the president remains the only president in American history to lead the country into war and ask the wealthy to pay less in taxes, abandoning any sense of shared sacrifice. The result has been unprecedented deficits that will be left for future presidents to struggle with and future generations to pay. How can anyone claim to be a wartime president while giving millionaires tax cuts averaging $100,000 a year? The key test of Bush last Sunday was whether he was prepared to level with the American people and whether he had learned anything from the unilateral war on Iraq. He failed both of those tests once more. suntimes.com lurqer