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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (48077)	6/1/2004 8:22:06 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793897

Iraq and the Conservative Crackup By E. J. Dionne Jr. Tuesday, June 1, 2004; Page A23 Nothing succeeds like success and nothing fails like failure. In politics, this means that if a leader is seen as doing well, his side in the debate holds together and suppresses disagreements that are quite real but don't seem worth pursuing if they get in the way of winning. It also means that if a leader is perceived as doing badly, those quite real disagreements are seen as much more important. Parts of the leader's political coalition try to disengage themselves from the perceived failure and differentiate themselves from those whom they see as incompetent and thus representing something other than the true faith. Former president Jimmy Carter knows what this is like. He faced rebellions on the left and right wings of the Democratic Party in 1980. The left went with Ted Kennedy when he challenged Carter in the Democratic primaries. The right defected to Ronald Reagan that fall in the great neoconservative rebellion. The first President Bush had solidarity going for him in 1988 -- the economy was strong and he was seen as continuing Reagan's successful presidency. By 1992, when Bush looked like he was a goner, conservatives were saying the president wasn't conservative enough. Moderates said he wasn't moderate enough. Unfair, perhaps, but unsurprising. The beginnings of a conservative crackup under this President Bush flow directly from the perceived failures of his policies in Iraq. Whatever one's view of the war, things are not going as promised, or as hoped for. Bush dominated politics in the months after Sept. 11. Almost everything he said or did then was seen as a sign of strength and fortitude. Now when he does the same things, they are seen as signs of stubbornness and a lack of reflection. The line between the virtues and the flaws is slim, and decisive. And that means that solidarity -- a characteristic of the conservative movement for the past three decades except for interludes under Richard Nixon and the first George Bush -- is fraying. Lacking unity, conservatism is expressing its variety. There are, first, the traditionalist conservatives, the most authentic of the breed. They are skeptical of large projects undertaken by government to improve humanity because they don't fully trust either government or humanity. It is our fate to live with imperfection and it is wise to be mistrustful of utopia. It is this view that has made the columns of George Will, my conservative colleague, so powerful over the past few months. Will in no way sounds like a liberal in criticizing Bush's war in Iraq. "Conservatives are not supposed to be especially nice," he wrote recently. "They are bleak, flinty people given to looking facts in the face; hence, they are prone to pessimism." In this telling, the Iraq venture looks more like exporting the Great Society's community action program to Tikrit than a policy rooted in conservative realism. But the neoconservatives who deeply believe in the purposes of this war are not happy either. They can't understand how the administration could botch such an essential project. Why, they ask, were more troops not sent to Iraq at the beginning to get the place under control? Why has there been such a reluctance to smash opposition to the American venture in Iraq, to "give victory a chance," as William Kristol wrote recently in the Weekly Standard? The isolationist conservatives around Pat Buchanan cannot understand why we went to war in the first place -- and they opposed it from the beginning. These conservatives speak explicitly about the "costs of empire," much as the left does. They argue that globalism is really "globaloney" and that being an empire is incompatible with being a republic. With the splits on Iraq exposed, other splits within conservatism become more obvious. Small-government conservatives feel ever more free to speak out against the large budget deficits over which Bush has presided. Anti-immigration conservatives speak out against the president's immigration policies. Pro-military conservatives criticize Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's dominion over the Pentagon, reflecting the views of many in the military brass who never much liked Rumsfeld or his plans. Yes, Bush's problems have something to do with his declining poll ratings. Trouble in politics breeds more trouble. A bit more stability in Iraq could breed a bit more stability in the conservative movement. Bush has to hope so, because it's hard to win reelection when you have to put out so many fires in your own back yard. postchat@aol.com © 2004 The Washington Post Company

To: Lane3 who wrote (48077)	6/1/2004 11:32:43 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793897

Testing confirms sarin gas in Baghdad bomb John J. Lumpkin (Associated Press Writer) WASHINGTON — Comprehensive testing has confirmed the presence of the chemical weapon sarin in the remains of a roadside bomb discovered this month in Baghdad, a defense official said Tuesday. The determination, made by a laboratory in the United States that the official would not identify, verifies what earlier, less-thorough field tests had found: the bomb was made from an artillery shell designed to disperse the deadly nerve agent on the battlefield. The origin of the shell remains unclear, and finding that out is a priority for the U.S. military, the defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Some analysts worry the 155-millimeter artillery shell, found rigged as a bomb on May 15, may be part of a larger stockpile of Iraqi chemical weapons that insurgents can now use. But no more have turned up, and several military officials have said the shell may have been an older one that predated the 1991 Gulf War. It likewise is not known whether the bombers knew they had a chemical weapon. Military officials have said the shell bore no labels to indicate it was anything except a normal explosive shell, the type used to make scores of roadside bombs in Iraq. No one was injured in the shell’s initial detonation, but two American soldiers who removed the round had symptoms of low-level nerve agent exposure, officials said last week. The shell was a binary type, which has two chambers containing relatively safe chemicals. When the round is fired from an artillery gun, its rotation mixes the chemicals to create sarin, which is supposed to disperse when the shell strikes its target. Since it was not fired from a gun but was detonated as a bomb, the initial explosion on May 15 dispersed the precursor chemicals, apparently mixing them in only small amounts, officials said then. In battle, such shells would have to be fired in great numbers to effect a large body of troops. Iraq’s first field-test of a binary-type shell containing sarin was in 1988, U.S. defense officials have said. Saddam Hussein’s government only disclosed the testing and production after Iraqi weapons chief Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Saddam’s son-in-law, defected in 1995. Saddam’s government never declared any sarin or shells filled with sarin remained. Saddam’s alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was the Bush administration’s chief stated reason for invading Iraq. U.S. weapons hunters have been unable to validate the prewar intelligence. Some trace elements of mustard agent, an older type of chemical weapon, were detected in an artillery shell found in a Baghdad street this month, U.S. officials said previously. The shell also was believed to be from one of Saddam’s old stockpiles.