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Has Bush Been Dodging?

Bush seems to be trying his best to save face in the very embarassing situation that has developed around the alledged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  This is not a justification for lying, but I do not believe the administration is guilty of anything quite that sinister.  It seems more like a hefty dose of incompetence.

Dale Lature writes in “Bush dodges the REAL question:”

Interesting how Bush gives his defense to STILL NO WMDs.  He keeps coming back to the “Saddam is BAD” defense.  Well, we all know that.  He then uses the pre-emptive strike defense, which will not fly with most people except the most hard-core military.  He completely refuses to answer how the JUSTIFICATIONS he gave are totally bankrupt. He lied.  They used deception to rush us into something, riding the coat tails of 9-11.

And still, the religious right holds up Bush as a “moral example.”  It sickens me.

As Jonah Goldberg says in his editorial, “Straightforwardness would defuse WMD issue:”

As I’ve tried to demonstrate in this space before, the idea that the president lied to the American people hinges on—at least—one almost impossible fact: that George W. Bush knew for a certainty that the intelligence agencies of America, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Australia, as well as the United Nations and countless independent experts were all wrong.

It seems more likely to have played out as the Minneapolis Star Tribune describes in “WMD/Bad intelligence, but more:”

…The Clinton administration was getting the same intelligence, yet it, reasonably, did not head off to the United Nations to warn that Iraq needed to be invaded yesterday.  It wanted to take out Osama bin Laden; Saddam was a secondary concern.

That suggests someone in the Bush administration made an early decision to put the most dangerous possible spin on what Iraq intelligence was available.  Information that was tentative became certain; equipment that might have numerous uses became certified WMD material; rumors became fact.

There has been quite a bit of misleading going on, but it is not at all clear that the Bush administration knew that there wern’t any WMDs and told the public otherwise.  There are more reasonable theories that some CIA informants lied, and the Bush administration (and many other governments) wrongly believed the bad reports.

Also interesting is the Al Bawaba report, “Iraqi party insists intelligence on WMD was accurate.”