http://www.presstitutes.com/presstitutes/2005/11/blaming_the_dem.htmlPlease join us in welcoming the newest addition to the pantheon of Bush Iraq excuses: Blame the Democrats.
Everywhere you turn, Republicans, reporters, and other rightwing Bush-suckers are pushing the meme that Bush/Cheney did nothing wrong in taking America to war because Democrats also thought Saddam was a threat. Wolf Blitzer just confronted Senator Jay Rockefeller with it on CNN's Late Edition, reading directly from a Wall Street Journal editorial (talk about reporters echoing GOP talking points).
This farce is debunked by several bloggers, including Publius:
"I did want to respond quickly to this growing chorus of WMD citations from Clinton and others on the issue of Bush and Iraq's WMDs. The argument here is that Bush's mistake in talking about the WMDs was an honest one because it was shared by many respected leaders and analysts on the other side of the aisle.
No, no, no, no.
There are two different - and conceptually distinct - questions here. The first is whether it was reasonable to assume that Saddam had WMDs. Personally, I believe that it was. That doesn't necessarily mean that war was the best option for dealing with them, but I readily concede that the belief was at least reasonable.
But that's completely different from the question of whether Bush and others intentionally lied to, or misled, the public about the specific WMD information they had gathered and had reviewed. What Clinton said has exactly ZERO relevance to this question."
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And Michelle Pilecki at HuffPo adds this:
"Now that Democrats have seriously started to question the pre-war intelligence they were given, the White House response is to invoke President Clinton. The mainstream media response seems largely to continue their stenographer's act. The widely carried AP story quotes White House press secretary Scott McClellan: "If Democrats want to talk about the threat that Saddam Hussein posed and the intelligence, they might want to start with looking at the previous administration and their own statements that they've made."
CBS, unlike most news outlets picking up the story, did manage to add that "McClellan did not directly respond when a reporter noted that the Clinton administration did not use that conclusion to go to war."
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This new wool-pulling tactic is pitiful. First, many Democrats voted against the Iraq War Resolution, so according to the logic of the 'Blame the Democrats' crowd, these Democrats have every right in the world to question Bush/Cheney's honesty on Iraq. Second, among the Democrats who voted in favor of the IWR, John Kerry is often the main target for those pushing this bogus 'Blame the Democrats' excuse. But here's what Kerry said on the Senate floor when he voted in favor of the IWR:
"In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.
If we do wind up going to war with Iraq , it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent--and I emphasize "imminent''--threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has recognized a similar need to distinguish how we approach this. He has said that he believes we should move in concert with allies, and he has promised his own party that he will not do so otherwise. The administration may not be in the habit of building coalitions, but that is what they need to do. And it is what can be done. If we go it alone without reason, we risk inflaming an entire region, breeding a new generation of terrorists, a new cadre of anti-American zealots, and we will be less secure, not more secure, at the end of the day, even with Saddam Hussein disarmed.
Let there be no doubt or confusion about where we stand on this. I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances.
In voting to grant the President the authority, I am not giving him carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that poses or may pose some kind of potential threat to the United States. Every nation has the right to act preemptively, if it faces an imminent and grave threat, for its self-defense under the standards of law. The threat we face today with Iraq does not meet that test yet. I emphasize "yet.'' Yes, it is grave because of the deadliness of Saddam Hussein's arsenal and the very high probability that he might use these weapons one day if not disarmed. But it is not imminent, and no one in the CIA, no intelligence briefing we have had suggests it is imminent. None of our intelligence reports suggest that he is about to launch an attack.
The argument for going to war against Iraq is rooted in enforcement of the international community's demand that he disarm. It is not rooted in the doctrine of preemption. Nor is the grant of authority in this resolution an acknowledgment that Congress accepts or agrees with the President's new strategic doctrine of preemption. Just the opposite. This resolution clearly limits the authority given to the President to use force in Iraq , and Iraq only, and for the specific purpose of defending the United States against the threat posed by Iraq and enforcing relevant Security Council resolutions..."
Kerry may have genuinely believed that Saddam had WMDs, but the above text affords him more than enough latitude to retroactively criticize Bush on Iraq.
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