By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A32
In announcing that the United States was poised to invade Iraq 19 months ago,
President Bush told the nation: "Intelligence gathered by this and other
governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and
conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. . . . 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."
Bush's decision to attack Iraq came after urgent warnings by the president and
his top aides about the challenge posed by Iraq -- what Bush called "a serious
and mounting threat to our country" in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union
address before Congress. Few lawmakers questioned these warnings -- Sen. John
F. Kerry, now the Democratic presidential nominee, did not -- and many
frequently echoed them.
But the argument that the United States faced a moment of maximum peril in early
2003 from Iraq has been greatly weakened by the release last week of the
comprehensive report of chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer. The
report found that the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections
destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability, leaving it without any chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons. Hussein hoped to someday resume his weapons
efforts, the report said, but for the most part there had been no serious
effort to rebuild the programs.
In the wake of the report, President Bush has reframed the way he characterizes
his rationale for the launching the war. A review of his public statements
before the war and this week shows how broadly his public argument has shifted,
away from warnings that Hussein actually possessed horrible weapons in favor of
talking almost exclusively about the dictator's intent.
This week, Bush said Iraq had been a "unique threat" and the United States was
justified in attacking, largely because Hussein "retained the knowledge, the
materials, the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction."
"And he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies," the
president told reporters.
[more]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20562-2004Oct9.html
--
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas -- that says, fool
me once, shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
http://www.diymedia.net/audio/mp3/tdntb-bushwack2.mp3
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