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July 15, 2004 Bush Hoping for Mass Amnesia by Doug Bandow Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is the author of
Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton's commitment to doing the popular
thing politically was legendary. He has met his match, however. If anything,
President George W. Bush is even more devoted to turning everything to
his political advantage. The day after former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appeared in the dock
in Baghdad, a story appeared in the Washington Times headlined "Bush
Backers See Trial Taking Focus Off WMDs (weapons of mass destruction)."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan and Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman
both publicly pointed to Hussein's brutality. One unnamed source told
the newspaper: "Put aside the WMDs, and go look at the mass graves."
The Bush administration's strategy is clear: After taking the United
States into war based on a lie, get Americans to forget the lie. Playing
the humanitarian card just won't do. The administration was blissfully
unconcerned about mass graves before 9/11. There were no plans to oust
Hussein and end his tyranny even as his security forces continued to arrest,
torture, and murder people. Moreover, after preparing for war, Bush offered to call off the attack
if Hussein went into exile. Hauling Hussein into court and creating Western-style
democracy were dispensable objectives. The supposedly charity-minded administration has done nothing about millions
of dead in Congo, starvation and civil war in Sudan, and ongoing Russian
brutality in Chechnya, to name just a few humanitarian catastrophes around
the globe. Washington left war-torn Liberia to the Africans. The administration
has proposed no military remedy for ousting the Myanmar junta and has
reopened relations with oppressive Libya. North Korea's Kim Jong Il continues
to kill in peace while Washington negotiates possible aid packages. In fact, humanitarianism was but a throwaway line as assorted administration
officials made their case for war with Iraq. Bush called Hussein's human-rights
abuses troubling, but said he doubted that they constituted a cause for
war. In an interview last year, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz admitted
that the internal consensus was that humanitarian concerns did not warrant
risking American lives in battle. Since there were sharp administration
divisions over the existence of operational ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda,
Wolfowitz observed, only fear of presumed Iraqi possession of WMD unified
the administration. So, he explained, it served as the centerpiece of
the administration's case, for both domestic and foreign audiences. Said Secretary of State Colin Powell, "Saddam Hussein could have
produced 25,000 liters" of anthrax and had accounted for none of
it. Added Powell: "Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts
of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard [gas], 30,000
empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as
much as 500 tons of chemical agents." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of "large, unaccounted-for
stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons -- including VX, sarin,
cyclosarin and mustard gas; anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox."
Bush claimed that "we found biological laboratories." Powell
pointed to unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, that "are well suited
for dispensing chemical and biological weapons." In fact, the administration
charged that UAVs could hit American cities. Alas, all of these claims
have proved to be false. Of course, maybe someone will eventually find something, as Hussein seemed
to preserve program elements in the hopes of a future revival. But that
isn't the same thing. Said David Kay, who ran America's Iraq Survey Group:
"It clearly does not look like a massive, resurgent program, based
on what we discovered." So now administration officials hope that American voters will simply
forget. And the president's supporters think the trial of Hussein will
help promote mass amnesia. In fact, the administration seems to be positioning itself to manipulate
coverage of the trial. At Hussein's hearing, U.S. officials ordered pool
reporters to disconnect their audio equipment when the former dictator
was speaking. All-too-aware of how former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic won
sympathy in Serbia by challenging his foreign accusers, perhaps Bush's
aides plan to mute as much of Hussein as possible. After all, administration
supporters are committed to making political mileage out of the trial.
Hussein was a cruel dictator, a thug who deserves to be tried and punished.
But that does not make him unique. Nor does it justify the U.S. and its
allies going to war. The American people must hold the Bush administration
accountable for taking the country into war on a lie. This article was published in the Japan Times, July 12, 2004.
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