I have been out of e-mail range for several days, in case anyone noticed. The Ozarks are still beautiful, and Sylamore Creek in N. Arkansas is beautiful and deep due to a recent storm. I went there to confirm an earlier scientific discovery: that a bottle of Corona will float if you have just the right amount of beer in it.
As I fire up Firefox, I notice this piece by Fred Hiatt in the Washington Post.
Search the Internet for "Bush Lied" products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic "Bush Lied, People Died" bumper sticker is only the beginning.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans...
The liberal mantra is repeated so often, it must be very easy to prove. Well, no.
On Iraq's nuclear weapons program? The president's statements "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates."
On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president's statements "were substantiated by intelligence information."
On chemical weapons, then? "Substantiated by intelligence information."
On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information." Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? "Generally substantiated by available intelligence." Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information."
Ok, so what about the Iraq/Al Qaeda thing?
[S]tatements regarding Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information." Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda "were substantiated by the intelligence assessments," and statements regarding Iraq's contacts with al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information." The report is left to complain about "implications" and statements that "left the impression" that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.
As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you've mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment...
The claim that Bush lied, that "the information disseminated by the Bush regime leading up to the invasion of Iraq was phony [see The Northern Valley Beacon]," is itself phony. Most of those who make this charge give no thought at all to the evidence on which it might rest. They just like disliking George W.
The problem with this jaundiced view of the beginning of the war is that it blinds us to the real problems that such situations present. As Hiatt puts it:
The phony "Bush lied" story line distracts from the biggest prewar failure: the fact that so much of the intelligence upon which Bush and Rockefeller and everyone else relied turned out to be tragically, catastrophically wrong.
And it trivializes a double dilemma that President Bill Clinton faced before Bush and that President Obama or McCain may well face after: when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security, in a democracy that will always, and rightly, be reluctant.
There is no question that the intelligence services in both the U.S. and Britain were wrong about the extent of Iraq's weapons programs. If we want to do better next time, we have to face what went wrong last time. About one third of the American people, according to the Beacon, insist on ignoring that story.
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