Liberals Team-Up with Saddam
Saddam Hussein and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee
agree: President Bush is the enemy.
Trapping George W. Bush
By Frank J Gaffney Jr.
November 11, 2003
What do erstwhile Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein and the vice chairman of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, West Virginia
Democrat, have in common? They both seem to have been so keen to
defeat George W. Bush that their subordinates resorted to laying traps
for the president and his
administration.
According to press reports, Saddam personally endorsed the initiative
conjured up by senior Iraqi intelligence officers involving an
11th-hour deal to stave off Operation Iraqi Freedom.
One can be forgiven for wondering whether Mr. Rockefeller also had
prior knowledge of the trap described in a memorandum written by his
staff - involving cynical use of the Intelligence Committee's
traditional
nonpartisanship for political advantage at the president's expense.
After all, the senator adamantly refuses to disavow this memo or its
contents.
The Iraqi dictator clearly hoped that he would be able to do to Bush
43 what he did to Bush 41: Outlast him. Saddam must have calculated he
could survive the son's efforts to topple him, just as he did the
father's, by offering some last-minute concessions via a trusted
interlocutor, Bush II's Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle.
The bait? At a meeting last March in London, a Lebanese-American
interlocutor told Mr. Perle that, among other things: 2,000 FBI agents
could enter Iraq to look around for weapons of mass destruction (WMD);
a terrorist wanted in connection with the first World Trade Center
attack (who happened to be living in Iraq) would be turned over to the
U.S.; and elections could be held in Iraq in two years.
Fortunately, as Mr. Perle said on ABC's Sunday news program "This
Week," this gambit was recognized by the Bush administration as the
"trap" it was. U.S. weapons inspectors would likely have fared no
better in trying to find the unaccounted-for Iraqi WMD in Saddam's
police state than did their U.N. counterparts. (Even after Saddam was
toppled, 1,200 military and other personnel have thus far been stymied
in their search for more than evidence of related manufacturing
programs and concealment efforts.)
Understanding the danger posed by a state-sponsor of terror, the
administration was also unmoved by the offer of a single terrorist
(even a most-wanted one), just as it understood the dubious value of
any elections
Saddam would be willing to allow. After all, he had won the last one
with 100 percent of the vote.
As for the Rockefeller staff initiative, a Democratic colleague from
Indiana, Sen. Evan Bayh, has observed that the Intelligence
Committee's vice chairman has been under intense pressure to use the
panel for partisan
purposes. Evidently, the hope has been that Democrats would also be
able to do to Bush 43 what they did to Bush 41 in 1992: Deprecate his
military victory as incomplete or otherwise flawed and seek to elicit
at the polls a vote of no-confidence in his leadership.
Since the Rockefeller staff memo was revealed last week by talk-radio
and television host Sean Hannity, the nature of the trap it proposed
for President Bush has been the topic of intense debate on and off
Capitol Hill.
What has not been explicitly recognized is that the plan - the trap -
envisioned by this memo is already far advanced.
Last July, the Intelligence Committee took extensive testimony from
senior Defense Department officials concerning the nature of the
intelligence in hand before Iraqi Freedom was launched, how it was
handled within the Bush administration and whether it was manipulated,
hyped or otherwise distorted so as to induce members of Congress or
the public to support an otherwise unwarranted war against Saddam
Hussein.
In late September, Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican,
agreed to a further request for information from Mr. Rockefeller. It
took the form of a joint letter to the Pentagon asking additional
questions. In the course of preparing this letter, however, Mr.
Roberts declined to include a number
of those proposed by the minority. Mr. Rockefeller, however,
subsequently sent them along over his own signature.
This is precisely the strategy described in the Rockefeller staff
memo: "Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may
lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable
conduct by administration officials. ... [And] prepare to launch an
independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the
opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. The best time
to do so will probably be next year."
By implementing this strategy, the minority staff - and perhaps others
in the Senate's Democratic ranks - have already undermined the
nonpartisan character of the Intelligence Committee. They have indeed
set the stage to "pull the trigger" on an investigation designed
specifically to go after the Office of the Secretary of Defense and
Undersecretary of State John Bolton, two of the Bush administration's
most import loci of intellectual horsepower, strategic vision and
commitment to principled security policies.
For this reason, the Bush administration would be well-advised to
avoid this trap, as well. It should refuse to cooperate further with
the committee's investigation - at least until, as Sen. Zell Miller,
Georgia Democrat, put it last week "The ones responsible - be they
staff or elected or both - should be dealt with quickly and severely
sending a lesson to all that this kind of action will not be
tolerated, ignored or excused. Heads would roll."
--
Left-wing liberals are EVERYTHING they accuse the right of being. They
are mean, vicious, hateful, greedy, cold-hearted, selfish, intolerant,
bigoted and racist.
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