Branding somebody a liar is a pretty powerful thing to do. It is
even more powerful when it is done four times, as Senator Ted
Kennedy demonstrated in a remark about the war against Iraq. He
said, “Week after week after week after week, we were told
lie after lie after lie after lie.” This isn’t your
ordinary cup of political tea.
Yet it worked; for, much like Roosevelt’s New Deal and
Johnson’s Great Society, it managed to replace a clear
definition of terms with politically meaningless rhetoric.
The fad of sophism has attached itself to the current so-called
anti-war movement ““ to the point that a Google search for
“Bush lies on Iraq WMD” yields some 100,000 Web pages.
But far worse is the mantra: “Where are the weapons,
Bush?” This mantra has become the platform and the hope of
the current Democratic presidential candidates. Everyone from the
Democratic front-runner Howard Dean to the indefatigable Rev. Al
Sharpton has jumped on the name-calling bandwagon.
My purpose here is not to demonstrate that Bush’s
statements regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were true.
No one knows this for sure. My purpose is to demonstrate that
making WMD the centerpiece of the Democratic party platform is both
tasteless and damaging to its own prominence.
To claim that the existence of WMD in Iraq was a fantasy born in
Bush’s head is to disregard the many countries, world leaders
and intelligence agencies that reached the same conclusion
independently and years before. In 1998, former President Bill
Clinton, backed by the “unanimous recommendation of (his)
national security team,” authorized the use of force against
Iraq “to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its
neighbors.”
In a radio address, Clinton explained his decision: “Other
countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic
missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used
them. Not once, but repeatedly. Unleashing chemical weapons against
Iranian troops during a decade-long war. Not only against soldiers
““ but against civilians ““ firing Scud missiles at the
citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. And not only
against a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing
Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq.”
But Clinton wasn’t the only one privy to this information.
In an October, 2003 speech, David Kay, the present U.S. weapons
inspector in Iraq, decisively said “Iraq’s WMD programs
spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people,
billions of dollars and were elaborately shielded by security and
deception operations that continued even beyond the end of
Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
The fact is there was at least one point when Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction. In response, the United Nations passed
Resolution 1441, which called for the unconditional disarmament of
Iraq. Hussein clearly refused to comply.
So President Bush was faced with two facts. First, Saddam
Hussein had WMD. Second, Saddam Hussein refused to destroy said
WMD. It was based on this pre-existing information that President
Bush authorized the invasion of Iraq to depose a dangerous
regime.
Yet instead of attacking the general justification for the war
and debating its merits, the opposition took greatest issue with 16
words the president uttered in a speech: “The British
government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Since he said this, it has been purportedly refuted by several
sources, and as a result, we have again arrived at our mantra: Bush
is a liar. Yet the statement could only be refuted if Bush was
misrepresenting the findings of British intelligence. President
Bush was not stating his own opinion ““ he was stating the
opinion of the British government. An opinion, incidentally, that
is sustained to this day.
The undue emphasis placed on WMD is rooted in a confusion of
terms. Acting on common, if potentially faulty, knowledge is not
the same as deliberately distorting facts. The first is making an
unintended mistake. The second is lying.
The fact is that President Bush was acting on information from
diverse sources and different time periods. His statements and
speeches added nothing new to the status of WMD in Iraq. This data
had been compiled over many years ““ not only by past
presidents but also by the United Nation, the British and the
French.
Rational people can argue about the morality of this most recent
war. But by focusing on irrelevant judgment calls and rhetoric, the
Democrats have stopped this more important discussion from taking
place. They have turned the presidential election into a debate of
jargon instead of ideas.
The people of the United States vote for the candidate who
presents to them the best ideas, not the prettiest words. We look
for good character, not a mastery of rhetoric. That is why
President Bush won the 2000 election. And unless the Democrats
change their strategy, he will win again this November.
Hovannisian is a first-year history and philosophy student.
E-mail him at ghovannisian@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.