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Much Ado About Sixteen Words
By Tim Siggia
July 18, 2003
The question asked by Democrats about a Republican president 30 years ago is being asked again today -- again by Democrats about a Republican president. Goes to show how progressive the thinking of the Democratic Party really is, if you ask me.
It all centers around 16 words in a state-of-the-union address in which President Bush stated that Saddam Hussein was purchasing uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The information came from British intelligence, and is now being called into question -- though British intelligence stands by its assessment. And now the Democrats, smelling blood, are circling for the kill, questioning Mr. Bush's credibility by intimating that he deliberately used faulty intelligence to draw the United States into war with Iraq. This after eight years of a president who would lie to the very face of God, without so much as a peep of protest from these very same Democrats.
For roughly a week now we have been inundated with news story after news story on this quickly staling subject as if it were the Crime of the Century -- assuming, of course, that a crime in fact has been committed. Looking at it from a worst-case scenario, about the only thing that can truly be said about Mr. Bush in this regard is that he made a mistake. Oh horrors, he made a mistake!
Considering the relatively few mistakes this president has made for one who was supposed to be a dunderhead, I'd call that a pretty tame charge and a pretty good record. The president who makes no mistakes at all has yet to take office. In fact, if someone truly makes zero mistakes, it means one of two things: either he's God, or he never does anything, so he never gets a chance to make any mistakes! By most accounts, God has come to earth in human form only once -- and contrary to what Democrats would like to believe, the event happened in Bethlehem of Judea, not Hope, Arkansas.
Mr. Bush has owned up to the possibility of a mistake. True, CIA director George Tennant has claimed responsibility, but ultimate responsibility lies with the commander-in-chief, and Mr. Bush knows this -- assuming, of course, that a mistake has been made in the first place. After all, it isn't as if he deliberately started hostilities in Iraq just to divert attention away from his own impeachment, or bombed an aspirin factory in Afghanistan because he heard, from faulty intelligence sources, that weapons of mass destruction were being manufactured there. Another president did those things, and where were the Democratic watchdogs then?
What all this comes down to is, as usual, political posturing by the Democrats, particularly by Democratic president wannabes. If this is the only weakness John Kerry et. al. can find to zero in on, it speaks poorly of them and well of George W. Bush -- and gives Americans plenty of good reason to vote Republican in 2004.
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