I posted my previous rant ("Bush admits..."; read it first if you haven't already) on our local e-mail list. I got a quick response from Eric, who pointed out: Bob ... actually in his state of the union address he said repeatedly things like "he has given no evidence of destroying them" rather than "he has not destroyed them." Wanting, at least usually, to be as accurate as possible, I did a little research and responded to Eric as follows:
You're basically correct about the state of the union address, although he did say that the line that he repeated many times later: "If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him." While from a technically logical point of view this doesn't preclude attacking anyway, it clearly suggests that possession of weapons will be THE reason for attacking. But back in October, Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati where he said that Iraq posesses chemical and biological weapons:
Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.
And in his address the night the war began he said:
The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.
I'm pretty sure there have been other quotes from Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Fleischer and others along the lines of "He's got them. We know he's got them." Hopefully there will be a few in the media ready to quote these if Bush tries to use his qualifiers from the state of the union address to cover his butt. And as far as the supposed lack of documentation regarding the destruction of weapons, I think there are several responses, both flippant and accurate:
"Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." (What Rummy said about WMD's)
The documents may well have been destroyed in any of the numerous bombings over the past 12 years, or in the recent looting of most government ministries in Baghdad.
If you were destroying something you weren't supposed to have, and had said you didn't have, would you document it?
Finally, I guess I'd say that W's speechwriters clearly made an attempt at a pre-emptive butt-covering. Any attempt to use it now should immediately be jumped on with these question: "Why? Were you not sure of your own information, or did you actually know that it was false? One-hundred twenty-three US soldiers are dead because you took us to war on pretexts that you knew were false?"
So, at least in my liberal, logical mind, we've got him, in his own words. Unfortunately, he's got the media and Tom DeLay and millions of warons, and he's the type of person who always believes he's right, no matter how irrefutable the proof to the contrary may be.
You're basically correct about the state of the union address, although he did say that the line that he repeated many times later: "If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him." While from a technically logical point of view this doesn't preclude attacking anyway, it clearly suggests that possession of weapons will be THE reason for attacking. But back in October, Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati where he said that Iraq posesses chemical and biological weapons:
Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.
And in his address the night the war began he said:
The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.
I'm pretty sure there have been other quotes from Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Fleischer and others along the lines of "He's got them. We know he's got them." Hopefully there will be a few in the media ready to quote these if Bush tries to use his qualifiers from the state of the union address to cover his butt. And as far as the supposed lack of documentation regarding the destruction of weapons, I think there are several responses, both flippant and accurate:
"Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." (What Rummy said about WMD's)
The documents may well have been destroyed in any of the numerous bombings over the past 12 years, or in the recent looting of most government ministries in Baghdad.
If you were destroying something you weren't supposed to have, and had said you didn't have, would you document it?
Finally, I guess I'd say that W's speechwriters clearly made an attempt at a pre-emptive butt-covering. Any attempt to use it now should immediately be jumped on with these question: "Why? Were you not sure of your own information, or did you actually know that it was false? One-hundred twenty-three US soldiers are dead because you took us to war on pretexts that you knew were false?"
So, at least in my liberal, logical mind, we've got him, in his own words. Unfortunately, he's got the media and Tom DeLay and millions of warons, and he's the type of person who always believes he's right, no matter how irrefutable the proof to the contrary may be.
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