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Democrats demand âproofâ of alleged Iraqi weapons from Bush
On the eve of President Bushâs State of the Union address, congressional Democratic leaders challenged the president to show âproof to the worldâ that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. In what was billed as a âpre-buttalâ to Bushâs address to Congress and the nation Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the partyâs leader in the House, sharply criticized Bush for taking what they said was a âhurry-up approach on Iraqâ and charged that he was creating a âcredibility gapâ by saying one thing and doing another across a range of issues. âIf we have proof of nuclear and biological weapons, why donât we show that proof to the world â as President Kennedy did 40 years ago when he sent Adlai Stevenson to the United Nations to show the world U.S. photographs of offensive missiles in Cuba,â Daschle said at the National Press Club news conference. âAt a time when we have only just begun to fight the war on terror, the American people deserve to hear why we should put hundreds of thousands of American troops at risk, spend perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars, risk our alliances, and inflame our adversaries to attack Iraq,â said Daschle, D-S.D. I think all the reasons have been laid out already. Only somebody who's not paying attention â which I'll admit includes a large part of the short attention span public â doesn't know the details. If you've been asleep, or in Congress, you can catch up by reading this. Now, both Daschle and Pelosi know all these things, unless they've been on an extended bender or indulging in heavy usage of recreational medication. But they're going for political points, not having any concept of national interest that doesn't involve one or both of them, or at the very least a (D), in the White House. My hope is that Bush is merely giving them enough rope to hang themselves, and that there is an "Adlai Stevenson moment" in the offing. But even without it, the case has been made, the troops are in place, and unless Sammy absconds with the Iraqi treasury in the next four weeks he's toast. Having shot themselves in the mouths, Tom and Nancy should be toast at that point, too, looking like idiots. But since we live in a short attention span world (never forget that half of everyone you meet will be below average) six months later they won't be toast anymore. It'll all be in the past and we'll be expected to "Move On." And the followup... The Bush administration has assembled what it believes to be significant intelligence showing that Iraq has been actively moving and concealing banned weapons systems and related equipment from United Nations inspectors, according to informed sources. After a lengthy debate over what and how much of the intelligence to disclose, President Bush and his national security advisers have decided to declassify some of the information and make it public, perhaps as early as next week, in an effort to garner more domestic and international support for confronting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with military force, officials said. Why not let Orrin Hatch review it before you do? "The United States possesses several pieces of information which come from the work of our intelligence that show Iraq maintains prohibited weapons," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview published yesterday in an Italian newspaper. "Once we have made sure it can be done safely, I think that in the next week or soon after we can make public a good part of this material." The hard part's protecting the sources and methods. It's not going to matter to Sammy in a month or so, but if we're collecting from Iraq, we're also collecting from Syria and Iran â and Arabia. Wouldn't want 'em to shut down the pipeline. Daschle and Pelosi, as the minority leaders (they hate it when we say that!) have access to the data, by the way, as do the members of the two Intel committees. They're betting Bush won't release the good stuff, so they can continue gnawing his ankles. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-01-28 |
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