I’m sure Dean felt good taking the jab, and his audience loved it. But if the Democrats want to beat Bush next year, they aren’t going to do it by turning him into Nixon of Arabia. If the president is vulnerable on terrorism–and he may be–the real question will be, “Are we safer than we were on 9-11?” If Bush can’t answer yes, then he’ll be in jeopardy, and Iraq will look like a misadventure–no matter what the president knew when.
These days, even some Republicans are questioning Bush’s rather cocksure attitude of only a few weeks ago, when he–and everyone else in his administration–were assuring American voters that (European doubts aside) Saddam Hussein had all manner of WMD, and that he was ready to funnel them into the global terrorism network. It’s become increasingly clear that the intelligence behind that assertion was often fuzzy and indirect–not nearly the rock-solid evidence that Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and others seemed to be citing.
It’s easy to see why the Democrats want to make an issue of the evidence (or lack of it) and WMD (or lack of them). Many Democrats in Congress, and some of those running for president now, voted in favor of what amounted to the Iraq war resolution that the president wanted. But they did so in the face of widespread skepticism at the grass roots of their own party. Now those same Democrats are looking for a way to take on the president and distance themselves from a war they, in effect, sanctioned in advance. Calling Bush a liar is less risky–at least when you’re speaking to Democrats–than seeming to oppose the use of force on principle, which no Democrat can afford to do.
There’s another reason why Democrats like calling Bush a liar. It’s the same name Republicans called the Clintons for eight years. The unspoken argument now is that at least the former president didn’t lie about anything so grave as the justification for sending American troops into harm’s way.
But basing a campaign on calling Bush a liar about WMDs is dicey, at best. For one, there is the fact that, over a decade, Democrats from Bill Clinton on down assumed and said pretty much what Bush said last fall and winter–that Saddam had the stuff. There is also the chance that the new weapons inspection team assembled by the American and British occupation force will find the evidence that so far has eluded others. Democrats on and around the intelligence committees on the Hill have told me (as recently as last week) that they had plenty of reason to think that there were indeed WMDs in Iraq, or at least large if hidden quantities of “precursor” materials cleverly disbursed around the country. These people are not Bush toadies by any means. They say Bush wasn’t really straying far at all from the closed-door consensus.
That’s why Ari Fleischer breezily said the other day that an investigation of the intelligence process was “appropriate.” Translation: if you look, you’ll find a lot of Democrats who saw the evidence the same way. One of them is running for president: Dick Gephardt of Missouri.
Then there’s public opinion. Polls show, first of all, that most Americans think we were more than justified to take out Saddam, even if we never find any WMDs. And whatever they think of his handling of the economy–which isn’t much–most voters have a high regard for Bush personally. They may not think he’s the most caring person, or the sharpest knife in the drawer, but they tend to think he’s a straight shooter. Should our intel be better, especially if we are going to be policing the planet with pre-emptive strikes? Absolutely. But Bush and his conservative allies are cleverly turning that argument on its head, arguing that the spooks’ shortcomings in Iraq show that we need to spend more on the CIA, DIA, you name it. That is a Beltway argument for the most part, and one the Republicans are likely to win.
The kitchen-table issue with swing voters is elsewhere: on the issue of security. The president has argued, in essence, that we took out Saddam as a matter of self-defense and that doing so made America a safer, more secure place. What evidence is there for that? Not much. Indeed, one of Donald Rumsfeld’s earlier explanations for the lack of WMDs was disconcertingly in the other direction. He said that the stuff might have been spirited out of Iraq altogether. Not the kind of notion that would have made voters feel safer. He quickly ditched that argument.
Where is the connection to Al Qaeda? Sure there might have been one, but no real evidence of it has yet surfaced–and we know Al Qaida is dedicated to attacking us in the homeland. What about radicalized youths in the Muslim world? The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s spawned a generation of deadly radicals, including Osama bin Laden. Are we doing the same a generation later?
Where, for that matter, are Saddam Hussein, his sons, Osama bin Laden and his innermost circle? As we know, they are are still on the loose. In Iraq, Saddam and his Baathists are said to be offering bounties for dead American soldiers. If he’ll pay for that, why won’t he pay to kill Americans of any kind, anywhere, anytime–including in the homeland?
What about the credibility we gambled for the next pre-emptive attack, say on Iran. Is there any chance the world will be with us next time?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. But I do know the people I cover in politics. One of them is Tom Ridge, the secretary of Homeland Security. I spent some time with him recently and the best way I can describe him is … antsy. For an imperturbable guy, he had an air of distraction about him. That’s understandable; he has what is arguably the most thankless task in government. He said that another attack on the homeland was only a matter of time. A subsequent report said that Al Qaeda can be expected to try a WMD attack of sometime in the next two years.
If and when that happens, the question about the president won’t be, “What did he know and when did he know it.” It will be, “What did he do and when did he do it?”
