In the latest phase of his offensive against critics of the war in Iraq, President Bush quoted a series of Democrats about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein during a speech today:
Let me give you some quotes from three senior Democrat leaders: First, and I quote, "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons." Another senior Democrat leader said, "The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam Hussein is in power." Here's another quote from a senior Democrat leader: "Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think the President is approaching this in the right fashion."
They spoke the truth then, and they're speaking politics now.
But as TNR's Ryan Lizza points out, they're ripped wildly out of context:
The problem is that some of the quotes Bush now uses are highly misleading. "Another senior Democrat leader said, 'The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam Hussein is in power,'" Bush told his Alaskan crowd. The quote is from Senator Carl Levin during a CNN appearance on December 16, 2001. Here's the full context:
The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he is in power. But that does not mean he is the next target.
And the commitment to do that, it seems to me, could be disruptive of our alliance that still has work to do in Afghanistan. And a lot will depend on what the facts are in various places as to what terrorist groups are doing, and as to whether or not we have facts as to whether or not the Iraqis have been involved in the terrorist attack of September 11, or whether or not Saddam is getting a weapon of mass destruction and is close to it. So facts will determine what our next targets are.
In other words, Levin's full quote shows exactly the opposite of what Bush was trying to say it showed. Levin was laying out the case against attacking Iraq, arguing presciently that there was unfinished work in Afghanistan, that war in Iraq could damage alliances, and specifically cautioning against targeting Iraq absent hard evidence of Saddam's WMDS or his role in September 11. It's ludicrous to argue, as Bush did Monday, that Carl Levin "reached the same conclusion" on Iraq as Bush. Levin didn't even vote for the war resolution.
Bush also offered up this quote by Senator Harry Reid from a September 18, 2002 CNN appearance: "Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think the President is approaching this in the right fashion." Again, Bush's point in citing this quote is to blur any distinction between what Democrats said before the war and what Bush said before the war. But it is safe to say that Reid was not speaking of or praising Bush's use of false intelligence concerning yellowcake from Niger, aluminum tubes for a uranium enrichment program, and contacts between Mohamed Atta and Iraqi spies in Prague. Here's the full Reid quote:
As you know when his father went into Iraq, we had a very good debate. Some said one of the best debates in the last 40 years in Congress. We're going to have a debate. But I think we have to acknowledge what's gone on in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think that the president's approaching this in the right fashion. He's now trying to get the international community to join. Secretary Powell is basically living in New York, working with international community. And we have made progress.
Reid was offering support for Bush and Powell's diplomacy at the United Nations because the administration had previously signaled that Bush was not going to seek U.N. approval for the war. Bush is now essentially using the quote to suggest that Reid supported every decision the president ever made about Iraq.
Up is down! (For more, as always, see All the President's Spin.)
Bush also used a strange bit of rhetoric during his speech:
The truth is that investigations of intelligence on Iraq have concluded that only one person manipulated evidence and misled the world -- and that person was Saddam Hussein. In early 2004, when weapons inspector David Kay testified that he had not found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he also testified that, "Iraq was in clear material violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441. They maintained programs and activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point to resume their programs. So there was a lot they wanted to hide because it showed what they were doing that was illegal."
As TNR's Noam Scheiber notes on The Plank, this seems like a dumb approach -- why compare yourself to Saddam Hussein?
Once we actually have an investigation into how the administration used intelligence on Iraq--the crucial phase II of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, which we're still waiting on--we may learn that Bush also manipulated evidence and misled the world. In which case, according to Bush's formulation, there will be only two people who've done that--Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. Not exactly the company the president wants to be keeping at this point.
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