More on the Misled

From Investors Business Daily:


Posted 11/21/2005
Iraq: As the vice president points out, it was never our burden to prove Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. It was his burden to prove he didn't.

Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, Vice President Dick Cheney accurately laid out the case for staying the course in Iraq amid cries from those he described as having lost their memory or backbone — or both.

He reminded the nation that the liberation of Iraq was not something planned after Bush took office, but something that became official U.S. policy in 1998 — after Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act. That action followed years of violated U.N. resolutions, culminating in Saddam Hussein expelling U.N. inspectors.

Those who argue that Bush cherry-picked or manipulated prewar intelligence fail to explain this.

Clinton, who now claims liberating Iraq was a "big mistake," told the nation on Dec. 17, 1998: "Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. . . . Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. . . . If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow."

If Bush misled his critics, who misled Clinton? Who misled spy agencies of the U.K., France, Germany, Israel and Russia, among other major nations?

Not only have Bush critics forgotten their own prewar statements, but they've also forgotten U.N. Resolution 1441, which stated that Saddam Hussein had a "final opportunity" to account for the inventory of weapons reported after Desert Storm or there would be "serious consequences." He didn't, and there were.

The consensus among the world's spy agencies was that Saddam still had an arsenal of unaccounted-for biological and chemical weapons and had moved to rebuild his nuclear program.

Cheney told the AEI audience he didn't question the patriotism of Vietnam veteran John Murtha, the Pennsylvania congressman who proposed an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. The vice president did point out the consequences of doing so — not the least of which might be putting Iraqis at the mercy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and providing a host country for those who would kill us all.

Whether it was an immediate withdrawal or one with a date certain, it would tell terrorists to wait us out until we cut and ran, as we did after the 1983 bombing of our barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, a move that Osama bin Laden saw as a sign of our weakness.

A premature withdrawal would be a death sentence for all those who helped build an Iraqi democracy, from the publishers of newspapers to politicians who ran for office to the millions of Iraqis who risked their lives to vote in two free elections — and will do so again on Dec. 15 to elect a permanent government.

Three decades ago, Democratic "Watergate babies" were elected, and one of their first actions was to deny South Vietnam $800 million in military aid, including ammunition and spare parts. Five weeks later, North Vietnam began planning an invasion of the South, knowing we had grown war weary and wouldn't help.

Zarqawi, like North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, eagerly watches the attacks on an American president and his policies. He knows he cannot win on the ground. But he knows, as in Vietnam, he might win in the American press and in the Democratic caucus.