Pat Dollard | Young Americans

So, the Iraqis are well sick and tired of the terrorists imposing their screwed-up agenda on them and their country …

Seems the same can be said for the democrats and their screwed-up agenda in our country.

One more time for the cheap seats in the back of the Senate stained with Code Pink fake blood …

The plot thickens

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

IN THE EVENT you haven’t noticed it’s a presidential election year. You can tell by the ever growing flurry of conspiracy theories—not just delicious new ones like Barack Obama’s being some kind of Manchurian Candidate for Jihad, Inc., but ones that, even if they’ve grown old and wormy by now, can be pulled off the shelf and re-issued as a brand-new congressional report. Like the 170-page piece of work just out of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The precarious burden of this report is that the evil crew in the White House systematically exaggerated the threat that Saddam Hussein’s regime posed by tilting the intelligence available at the time and overlooking views that didn’t fit in with its lust for war.

But this report doesn’t even tell the half of it, for the sinister neocon cabal behind the invasion of Iraq was even wider than the Democratic majority of this Senate committee lets on. Here are just some of the dire warnings over the years about those elusive weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was supposed to be preparing. Innocent Reader might be surprised at their source “We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.” —President Bill Clinton, February 17, 1998.

“[Saddam Hussein ] has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies.” — Madeleine Albright, secretary of state in the Clinton administration, November 10, 1999.

“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.” —Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, September 19, 2002. (Senator Levin may now be demanding that President Bush set a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, but he can’t fool us. He was clearly part of this pro-war plot. )

“We know that [Saddam Hussein ] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country…. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.” —Al Gore, a former vice president of the United States who back then could sound remarkably like the current one, on September 23, 2002. Clearly both veeps were in this together.

“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” —Senator Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002. Yes, the same Ted Kennedy—may he soon be restored to full health—who would later claim that President Bush and his cronies cooked up the war in Iraq war on his ranch in Texas. But that accusation was probably just to distract us from the senator’s own part in stoking fears of a Saddam Hussein armed with WMD.

“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons….” —Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who would later become one of the more voluble opponents of the war, on October 3, 2002.

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members…. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.” —Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, now of New York, on October 10, 2002. Goodness. So many conspirators. That ranch house outside Crawford, Tex., where Ted Kennedy told us the war was hatched, must have been awfully crowded.

THERE ARE those who portray all these conspirators as just innocent victims of intelligence reports manipulated by the Bush administration and carefully fed to innocents like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and so many other Washington figures known for their simple naivete. Unfortunately for that theory, one bipartisan investigation after another into the collection and interpretation of pre-war intelligence has found no evidence of such manipulation.

To quote the Senate Intelligence Committee’s unanimous report back in 2004, “The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, manipulate, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities.” The independent Robb-Silberman Committee reached similar conclusions. All these people must have been in on the conspiracy, too. Jay Rockefeller, then the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, signed on to the committee’s 2004 report but, almost as soon as it was out, began charging that the Bush administration had coerced, influenced or pressured analysts to reach the conclusions it had wanted. This is the same Jay Rockefeller who, on October 10, 2002, had declared: “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years….” Naturally the majority report out last week, just in time for the presidential campaign, felt no need to quote Senator Rockefeller’s earlier warning about the growing danger of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The gigantic cover-up continues.

WHAT WE have here is a familiar historical pattern: If a war ends in victory, all the politicians favored it. But if difficulties are encountered, it turns out that many of these same politicians were never for the war in the first place. Or were fooled into supporting it. And what’s more, the war was the result of a deep, dark conspiracy: Franklin D. Roosevelt somehow maneuvered the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor; Lyndon Johnson conspired to expand the war in Vietnam; and naturally George W. Bush and his many co-conspirators manipulated the intelligence to get us into this war in Iraq. This presidential campaign is still young, and the conspiracy theories have only begun to flow. To quote that great political philosopher, Bette Davis, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” Having read the same pre-war intelligence reports as the administration, many of these leading Democrats reached the same conclusion as the administration—at the time. Now they tell us the administration was misleading the American people, conveniently overlooking their own, remarkably similar statements back then.

Surely these members of the loyal opposition were acting in good faith when they warned of the growing danger from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The question is whether they are acting in good faith now. And without good faith in debating the course of American policy in perilous times, divided we fall.