House of Eratosthenes

Search the Internet for “Bush Lied” products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic “Bush Lied, People Died” bumper sticker is only the beginning.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word.

“In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent,” he said.

But dive into Rockefeller’s report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.”

On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president’s statements “were substantiated by intelligence information.”

On chemical weapons, then? “Substantiated by intelligence information.”
:
In the report’s final section, the committee takes issue with Bush’s statements about Saddam Hussein’s intentions and what the future might have held. But was that really a question of misrepresenting intelligence, or was it a question of judgment that politicians are expected to make?

I’ll get to that in a second. But first let’s zoom in on what inspired Anchoress to say “Pinch me, I’m dreaming. Say it with me.”

But the phony “Bush lied” story line distracts from the biggest prewar failure: the fact that so much of the intelligence upon which Bush and Rockefeller and everyone else relied turned out to be tragically, catastrophically wrong.

Yes, how far we’ve come. If you could go back to 1991, nobody there would believe you when you told them we had a new President, who took down Saddam Hussein and got a litany of crap for doing it, weapons-o-mass-destruction or no. And, if you could go back to 2004 and tell ’em our mainstream press used the phrase “phony ‘Bush lied’ story line,” that wouldn’t be believed either.

Hell. That much wouldn’t have been believed last year. It’s kind of a bombshell now.

Fred Hiatt continues:

And it trivializes a double dilemma that President Bill Clinton faced before Bush and that President Obama or McCain may well face after: when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security, in a democracy that will always, and rightly, be reluctant.

See, this is what I think people are missing. We haven’t put too much thought into why, really, it comes so easily to people to accept that “Bush lied.” There are the defects in integrity and character that wedge them into absurd anti-war dogma, in extreme situations wherein perhaps, as Phil says, “sometimes war IS the answer.” People can go through things, and some of these things make it look like a good idea to oppose war, unconditionally, all the time, and forever. One of those things is — war. Veterans can go through combat, and come away thinking war is so awful, that there must be a better way — always. Understandable, I suppose. But that’s feeling, not thinking. Engaging in it at such a critical decision-juncture is, simply, a mistake. Other people want to look good…and have secrets and other inner demons that persuade them toward the idea that they won’t look that way, until they do something grandiose, costless and perpetual. Like engage in silly war protests. Maybe it’s to convince those around them that they’re good people when they themselves know otherwise…form your own opinion about that.

Other folks engage in the twenty-seventh item among the things I know about people, minus what I was told when a child:

27. People who make a conscious decision not to offer help or defense to someone who needs it, don’t want anyone else to help or defend that person either.

Apart from all that, of course, the timeless cliche is still true: War protests are great places to meet chicks.

These are all reasons why people become stridently anti-war; it isn’t all about being pacifist and cuddly and sweet. But there are less personal reasons. Reasons that have to do with money and not character defects.

The United States is a superpower. Those other countries out there, be they belligerent or no, have their own economies; and all economies thrive in certainty and wither in uncertainty. Our weapons are under lock and key, but our political resolve to use them is not. We can be de-fanged, easily, with our arsenal remaining completely intact.

So Hiatt has hit on the agenda behind the “Phony ‘Bush lied’ line” in which we’ve been buried for these last five or six years, without trying to, perhaps without realizing it. What is a sign-off item of concern to him, has been the primary sense of purpose to others from the very beginning. It is to escalate the political cost paid by future Presidents, now and forevermore, for even thinking about engaging in military aggression. Even for the most entirely valid, sustainable, defensive and non-preemptive reasons.

Being the “big guys,” we are not to do it. We are not to even think about it.

Is the artificial aggravation of such political exigencies…treason? Well, I wonder what the Founding Fathers would have to say about it. Reading over the founding documents, including the Federalist papers (starting with 2 through 5, but there are others), Washington’s Farewell Address, and the Constitution itself, you can’t help but pick up on the concerns they had about anything — anything — discouraging the executive from showing well-placed hostility at the right time and place, so long as it served the national defense. Apparently, they were big fans of Phil.

Those who mold, shape, and direct the anti-war movement draw on anti-war passions; that does not mean they are guided by those passions. They are guided by strategy. They have reasons for gelding America into such a grotesque national and international political status that she never fights, no matter what.

Until all contemplations of war by our legislature, and our executive, look like this…

In this chapter with Iraq, the objective has been to scandalize the preemptive strike.

If that’s been successful, the new doctrine in place is that we can’t raise a hand against the other guy, until we’ve courteously allowed him to get his licks in. I’m sure that looks noble to some, but that doesn’t mean that it is. And it certainly doesn’t serve our nation’s interests.

In fact, it gets us most of the way there, to the “don’t fight ever, no matter what” doctrine. About eighty or ninety percent, give-or-take.

Well, we know now, it wasn’t based on truth, and for the most part wasn’t even based on an attempt to be honest. I wonder if it’s succeeded. Time will tell.

We haven’t put too much thought into why, really, it comes so easily to people to accept that “Bush lied.

We as a nation haven’t, that’s for sure. I think you and I have. I’ve always sputtered and grasped, though. That paragraph above is a pretty good collection presented in coherent form. Good deal. That’s why I come here.

the Founding Fathers […] Apparently, they were big fans of Phil.

Well, I don’t know about all that 😉 But I sure am big a fan of them.

I’d read this article today, too. I should pop over to the Anchoress and read her comments. I haven’t been out to her blog in a while.
- philmon | 06/09/2008 @ 22:07
Not to trivialize your point(s), Morgan, but I can vouch for the veracity of this particular statement:

Apart from all that, of course, the timeless cliche is still true: War protests are great places to meet chicks.

Back in the day, anyway. These days, not so much. Unless you happen to be in my age cohort and think “chicks” means 60-something, more-or-less burnt-out Earth Mother types trying to recapture their youth, circa 1968. And that would work for me, politics aside. But, like I said (or implied): I’m old. The rest of you young whipper-snappers have every right to laugh. 😉
- Buck | 06/10/2008 @ 15:34

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The Phony “Bush Lied” LineMonday, June 9th, 2008

The Phony “Bush Lied” Line
Monday, June 9th, 2008