The Other Gathering Threat

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 1, 2004

Byline: James P. Lucier, INSIGHT

The perfect storm began with a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, then another. The White House felt serene as President George W. Bush's approval ratings approached 60 percent. The gaggle of Democratic presidential hopefuls seemed to be operating in the fashion of a circular firing squad, knocking each other off, one by one, until Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), he whose campaign once had been in such disarray that he fired his staff and started over, seemed likely to be the last man left standing. Bush's people could hardly wait to tear into a Massachusetts liberal with a substandard record of accomplishment in the Senate and a voting record that the Americans for Democratic Action rated to the left of Ted Kennedy.

After the president's State of the Union address on Jan. 20, an adequate but lackluster performance, the wind shifted, and the Democratic mavens, operating in symbiotic relationship with the media, turned from attacking each other to the main target. The president's successes were now his failures, especially in Iraq. The tone was summed up by Time magazine. "For a president, trust is the one asset that, once lost, he can't buy back," opined Time. "It now seems likely that either Bush wasn't telling the truth about his reasons for going to war or he didn't know the truth and can't quite admit it. Neither prospect is very reassuring."

The first little cloud was the testimony of David Kay, departing head of the Iraq Survey Group. On Jan. 28 Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee under Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) and ranking minority member Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that Iraq was in clear violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441. "In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point, Iraq was in clear and material violation of Resolution 1441," Kay said. "We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis of activities that were prohibited. ... They maintained programs and activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point to resume their program. So there was a lot they wanted to hide because it showed what they were doing was illegal."

And in response to the accusation of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) that what happened was "the result of manipulation of the intelligence to justify a decision to go to war," Kay responded, "All I can say is if you read the total body of intelligence in the last 12 to 15 years that flowed on Iraq, I quite frankly think it would be hard to come to a conclusion other than Iraq was a gathering, serious threat to the world with regard to WMD [weapons of mass destruction]."

Even though Kay said he found proof that Saddam Hussein was in violation of Resolution 1441, that he was capable of producing WMD, that he had a cadre of scientists trained to produce WMD and that he had actual missiles capable of delivering WMD, the inspectors never found the stockpiles they had expected to find. On that point, he said and these were the words which broke into a thundercloud "We were all wrong." If Kay's inspectors hadn't found any bombs, Bush's critics had just found all they wanted.

"Credibility" became the issue, and even worse. Kay's inability to find stockpiles of WMD proved that the war was a mistake, critics said. The emergence of Vietnam vet Kerry, helped by TV spots promoting his wartime exploits (but overlooking his antiwar activism and accusations that his comrades-in-arms were war criminals), provided the opportunity to compare the putative Democratic candidate and his chest full of medals with the current commander in chief portrayed as a deceitful poseur who had failed in Iraq. Old charges were dragged in that Bush had failed to show up for Texas Air National Guard duty in 1973 charges raised, and then dropped, in 2000. Gen. Wesley Clark, campaigning for a chance as the next president to clean up what he called "the Iraq mess," stood by with implicit approval while his supporter, rhetorical incendiarist Michael Moore, called the president "a deserter," a word that ought to cause any general to flinch. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, using language he never would have used about Bill Clinton, said that Bush had gone AWOL.

In the media maelstrom that followed, Tim Russert grilled the president on NBC's Meet the Press and got him to agree to release his tax records and pay stubs from his time of service. At the time in question, Bush was on temporary duty in Alabama, and not with his Texas unit. Yet even when the payroll information on his Alabama stint was released, there was a further demand: The records showed he was paid for makeup sessions when he was working in Alabama, but was he actually there? The accusation turned around to bite the critics when the White House dredged up Bush's dental records as recorded by the military dentist on duty in Alabama.

But just as the battle was gearing up, a white powder was discovered in the Dirksen Senate Office Building mail room of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) the only physician in the Senate and author of a book on bioterrorism a reminder that terrorism still was on the agenda. Two years ago anthrax powder was found in the office of Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), then the majority leader, and the Senate office complex was shut down for weeks. This time the white powder tested positive for ricin, a deadly derivative of the castor bean. Again the office buildings were closed, and staffers roamed the halls of the Capitol,which remained open, with their cell phones and Blackberrys. Like Londoners in World War II who became used to working around the blitz, these unexpected victims of terrorism were more annoyed than concerned.