Charen said the administration’s case for removing Sadam rested on “many factors” and that WMDs was only one of them. But from what I can remember, it rested almost entirely on WMDs and the alleged al-Quaida link. It appears that the evidence for these two is week. Bush’s opponents may be overplaying their hand because who knows what will be found. But I think even National Review pointed out that the war was about Sadam’s alleged threat to the US and the war’s supporters can’t now change that fact.

Mr. Jackson fundamentally misstates, in fact he reverses, what Charen said. She didn’t say WMDs were only ONE of many factors, she said they were the most important and decisive of those many factors, the “CLINCHER,” as she describes it. In fact that was her main point, made at the start of her article:

“There is a camp of Iraq War cheerleaders who say that whether or not we find out what became of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction is irrelevant. The war was such a smashing success, they urge, that objections about WMDs are mere footnotes.

“This is too pat. The case the administration made (as did many of us who supported the war) rested upon many factors, including: the regime’s treachery; aggression toward its neighbors; hatred for the United States; support for global terrorists; internal barbarism; and mass murder of civilians. But the clincher was the regime’s determination to possess the most dangerous weapons known to mankind. It was known that Saddam not only held but had used poison gas against Kurdish civilians. His nuclear ambitions were delayed by the Israeli attack on the nuclear reactor at Osirak, but there were solid reasons to believe that he had never abandoned his goal.”

Although it may have been the “clincher” it was one of “many factors.”

Charen doesn’t tell the reader that its debatable whether Saddam used gas on the Kurds.

Mr. Jackson, I’m disappointed in you. Clearly, by mentioning her “several factors” comment while failing to mention her “clincher” comment, you gave an inaccurate picture of Charen’s statement. I corrected you. And now you split verbal hairs to avoid admitting that your initial description was wrong.

By “clincher” I took her to mean “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Said straw is nonetheless a straw.

Mr. Jackson remains obdurate in his sophism. When Charen referred to WMDs as the “clincher,” her meaning was that the concern about WMDs was, in combination with the fear of terrorism and the dangerous nature of Hussein, the DECISIVE issue in justifying war, not that it was a mere “straw that broke the camel’s back.” Her point was to urge war supporters not to back away from that fact. Yet Mr. Jackson seems unwilling to acknowledge her intellectual honesty and good faith. Rather, he wants to make it seem as if she is among those who, after the fact, are downplaying the importance of the WMDs issue.

In fact, her position is identical to the one I’ve stated many times at VFR, that it was the WMDs plus the regime that made military action imperative. Here is one of my entries:

http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/001358.html

And here is what Charen wrote:

“Obviously, possession of deadly weapons alone is not a compelling reason to engage in pre-emptive action. It is the nature of the regime combined with the nature of the weapons that creates a threat. We had every reason to fear that Saddam might share his WMDs with terrorist groups and we’d have no way to prove it or hold him responsible. Who was behind the anthrax attacks of October 2001?

“Few would have urged a war against Saddam if he had not possessed weapons of mass destruction. However much we rejoice for the Iraqi people who’ve been freed from his freak-show of a government, we are not in the business of militarily liberating all the world’s oppressed.”

“The case the administration made (as did many of us who supported the war) rested upon many factors, including … .”

I do not believe the administration’s case rested on “many factors” but only two. Charen may have supported the war for additional reasons.

10 Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq

By Christopher Scheer, AlterNet
June 27, 2003

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16274

do you wonder how mona charen would approach the issue if a democrat was in office and caught lying red handed?

i don’t.

mona may not be thinking very logically, but she is being a good mother hen doing everything in her power to stop the bleeding of her poor little gored ox. she really needn’t worry though, her stupid party is in the safe care of our even more stupid media.

abby’s propaganda post begins with this :

“”The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program … Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment need for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.” – President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.

FACT: This story, leaked to and breathlessly reported by Judith Miller in the New York Times, has turned out to be complete baloney.

Er…wrong. Parts of the equipment mentioned above have just been found. Given that the very first claim made by Mr Scheer can be refuted, the rest is not worth bothering with.

And lets be clear, President Bush has at no point lied about anything, nor would he given his moral character and Christian beliefs. The constant claim that he lied is the kind of gutter level tactics used by those with no real argument to make.

That we have only found various parts of a WMD program is hardly suprising, but we HAVE found them. Parts used in nuclear weapons programs, mobile labs, storage areas for chemical weapons, all have been found.

The logic of people like abby is laughable. Based on that logic, the fact that we have not yet found Saddam Hussien would be proof that he never existed.

It is a sad commentary on our nation that we have a President who is a decent, honest Christian man, who does not use the White House for his personal brothel (unlike the last one), and yet the liberal filth whos stench pervades America resort to character assasination to bolster the thinly vieled attempts to deny America the basic right of self defense.

Apparently 911 was not enough for abby. She wants more American blood to satisfy her sick hatred.

By the way, VFR regulars should take a good look at the source for abby’s propaganda.

http://www.alternet.org/

A reading of a few of the articles there revealed that it is a radical left wing web site devoted to gay “rights”, Marxist environmentalism, U.N global government and the ideology of anti-national globalism.

Why does abby post links to sites that nobody at VFR is going to take seriously?

Alert to VFR readers. I know that some here assert that Victor Davis Hanson is a liberal democrat (I dont), but his latest article in National Review is one of the best articles I have read recently, and many here at VFR should find some common ground with Hanson’s arguments.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson062703.asp

The “Bush Lied” Case Falls Apart
The president’s critics have to ignore too much evidence.

Another good national Review article refuting abby’s hysterical conspiracy theory.

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york062603.asp

shawn,
apparently you have difficulty keeping your emotions under control; but may i suggest, if you can’t do better than the following vitriol, you should limit yourself to comments on the weather.

Posted by: Shawn on June 28, 2003 10:44 PM
Apparently 911 was not enough for abby. She wants more American blood to satisfy her sick hatred.

you know shawn, you really shouldn’t be to terribly surprised that virtually all politicians lie, or be defensive for them. if you had ever worked in the upper levels of politics or campaigns, you would know that honesty is a very rare commodity.

i’ve always been of the opinion that you can always tell the rare ocassion when a politician has told the truth because he calls a press conference the next day to retract it.

When you read some of these articles that boldly and angrily announce Bush was lying, you find out that the arguments and facts amount to nothing, while the authors repeatedly ignore the very large record of statements by Bush and his advisors that show the carefulness with which they actually expressed themselves. Thus Cheney clearly misspoke about reconstituted nuclear “weapons,” as is evident from everything else he said in the same interview, but the accusers leave out the rest of the interview in their desire to paint him as having said that Iraq had nuclear weapons. Similarly, they ignore how careful and cautious Powell was in his statements about aluminum tubes and what they meant. For the accusers, reality doesn’t exist. The shrillness of the accusations on one hand, combined with the utterly unconvincing arguments on the other, is stunning, especially since much of this is coming from allegedly respectable journalistic sourses such as The New Republic.

This “Bush was lying about WMDs” phenomenon is not a political phenomenon, it’s a psychiatric phenomenon, or, rather, a mass-psychiatric phenomenon. But since the psychosis is expressing itself politically, I guess it’s a political phenomenon after all. Among the various problems that portend doom of our civilization, this increasing irrationality is, I think not a minor example.

dear l.a.,

thanks for the psychoanalysis, little did i realize it portends the doom of our civilization. and here i was thinking that all i was doing was just griping about being lied to.

staying focused is difficult for some of us with some kind of psychosis, good thing the cato institute is around to help. but be forewarned reading it may cause you too to be the doom of civilization

http://www.cato.org/dailys/06-19-03.html

“shawn,
apparently you have difficulty keeping your emotions under control;”

Not at all. My words were a reasonable interpretation of your own stance. If do nothing isolationists such as yourself were dictating American defense policy, then more terrorists attacks like 911 would certainly occur, as our enemies would take your policies as a sign of weakness.

The Politics of Mass Destruction
By Richard Spertzel.

Yet more evidense that it is not Bush that has lied, but anti-Bush paleocons and their liberal-left fellow travellers.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8623

Posted by: Shawn on June 29, 2003 08:45 AM
“Not at all. My words were a reasonable interpretation of your own stance. If do nothing isolationists such as yourself were dictating American defense policy, then more terrorists attacks like 911 would certainly occur, as our enemies would take your policies as a sign of weakness.”

and what were shawns words that he refers to above, well see below.

Posted by: Shawn on June 28, 2003 10:44 PM
“Apparently 911 was not enough for abby. She wants more American blood to satisfy her sick hatred.”

so we add shawn’s two posts together and what do we get: apparently 911 was not enough for isolationists, they want more american blood to satisfy their sick hatred.

yup, shawn steps into his own personal twilight zone and knocks another doozy of an off-the-wall homerun right into the outer limits of his imagination.

speaking of isolationists, for whom shawn says: apparently 911 was not enough, and want more american blood to satisfy their sick hatred, pat buchanan comments on the missing in action wmds.

http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/buchanan.html

bring on the investigation, it’s always fun to watch the republicans twist themselves into horrible knots.

fellow traveler srdja trifkovic give more insight into the iraqi bush war:

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic/NewsST061203.html

http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-cheney0627.artjun27,0,6499823.story?coll=hc-headlines-oped

Cheney And The CIA: Not Business As Usual
“Did the president himself know that the information used to secure congressional approval for war was based on a forgery? We don’t know. But which would be worse - that he knew or that he didn’t?”