The President Takes Up Podhoretz's Point

Much political attention today will go to the return of President Bush to the political offensive in his Veterans Day speech at Wilkes-Barre, PA. Among other things, the President said:

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.

Some Democrats and antiwar critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: "When I vote to give the president of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hand is a threat and a grave threat to our security."

That's why more then a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Bush has apparently been reading Norman Podhoretz's piece in December's Commentary, currently previewed on the magazine's website. SWNID urges gentle readers to take in the elder Podhoretz's diligent attention to the facts, not the media's selective memory, of history. In sum, he reminds us that:

• Scooter Libby's indictment has nothing to do with the case made for the Iraq War.
• Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, France and the UN, including Hans Blix, were before the war utterly convinced that Saddam had WMD.
• Colin Powell's loyal chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, recently counted as one claiming that the Secretary of State was misled about WMD, notes that the entire intelligence community was united in its belief that Saddam had or was pursuing WMD.
• Every member of the Clinton administration to speak on the subject in the late 90s expressed belief that Saddam had or was pursuing WMD.
• Leading Senate and House Democrats, including John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, expressed confidence, even fear, that Saddam had WMD.
• The Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 cleared the Bush administration of pushing the CIA or others to give the intelligence that it wanted in order to justify the war.
• Bush never called the threat of WMD from Iraq imminent; in fact, he repudiated the idea that imminence was necessary to justify preemptive action.
• Joe Wilson has lied about nearly every detail of his trip to Niger, which in fact gathered data that supported the assertion that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there.

While the fever swamp is buzzing about yet another investigation of all this, it will be useful to keep facts like these in mind.