On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 08:44:34 -0600, Mitchell Holman
<ta2eeneNoEmail@comcast.com> wrote:

Another Set of Scare Tactics

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Wash Post

November 15, 2005


The big difference between our current president and his
father is that the first President Bush put off the debate
over the Persian Gulf War until after the 1990 midterm
elections. The result was one of most substantive and honest
foreign policy debates Congress has ever seen, and a unified
nation. The first President Bush was scrupulous about keeping
petty partisanship out of the discussion.

The current President Bush did the opposite. He pressured
Congress for a vote before the 2002 election, and the war
resolution passed in October.

Sen. Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat who is no dove, warned
of rushing "pell-mell" into an endorsement of broad war
powers for the president. The Los Angeles Times reported
that Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, protested
in September: "We're being asked to go to war, and vote on
it in a matter of days. We need an intelligence estimate
before we can seriously vote." And Rep. Tom Lantos, a
California Democrat, put it plainly: "This will be one of
the most important decisions Congress makes in a number of
years; I do not believe it should be made in the frenzy of
an election year." But it was.

Grand talk about liberating Iraq gave way to cheap partisan
attacks. In New Mexico, Republican Steve Pearce ran an
advertisement against Democrat John Arthur Smith declaring:
"While Smith 'reflects' on the situation, the possibility of
a mushroom cloud hovering over a U.S. city still remains."
Note that Smith wasn't being attacked for opposing the war,
only for reflecting on it. God forbid that any Democrat dare
even think before going to war.

The bad faith of Bush's current argument is staggering.
He wants to say that the "more than a hundred Democrats
in the House and Senate" who "voted to support removing
Saddam Hussein from power" thereby gave up their right
to question his use of intelligence forever after. But
he does not want to acknowledge that he forced the war
vote to take place under circumstances that guaranteed
the minimum amount of reflection and debate, and that
opened anyone who dared question his policies to charges,
right before an election, that they were soft on Hussein.

By linking the war on terrorism to a partisan war against
Democrats, Bush undercut his capacity to lead the nation
in this fight. And by resorting to partisan attacks again
last week, Bush only reminded us of the shameful circumstances
in which the whole thing started.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2005/11/14/AR2005111401018.html