Over the past few weeks, an already-fought battle has risen from the ashes. Congressional Democrats, taking the indictment of Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and the continuing investigation of Bush senior advisor Karl Rove as a political home run, decided to restart the national debate about the intelligence community's and the Bush administration's assessments of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions." Those were the words of Democrat Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid shortly before invoking Rule 21 and sending the assembly into closed session. The Democrats have decided to re-fight the justification debate over Iraq. United and firm, they have declared that the president and his advisers lied, misled and deceived the American public about a nonexistent threat from Saddam Hussein and rushed the country into a war to remove him from power.
The critics face a major consistency and credibility problem. The question is, what happened to the Democratic leadership between now and 10 years ago? The answer is, nothing, except that an action that they endorsed and advanced was carried out by a Republican instead of a Democratic administration. We need to examine what these same Democratic leaders, now fervently attacking the administration for making up intelligence and misleading the public, thought about the threat posed by Iraq before Bush took office and six months before military action was launched.
On Oct. 31, 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, making regime change in Iraq an official national security goal. On Dec. 16, he ordered a military air strike on Baghdad to retaliate for Saddam Hussein's expulsion of United Nations weapons inspectors. "Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors."
What did the Democratic leadership in the Congress say while all of these statements and actions by Clinton's administration were being undertaken? Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the current House minority leader, stated on Dec. 16, 1998 that "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." A letter written to Clinton on October 9, 1998 by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and then-Senator Tom Daschle stated that, "we urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." On Oct. 16, 2002, the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq passed both houses of Congress (296-133 in the House, 77-23 in the Senate).
Here are the Democratic leaders speaking around the time of this critical vote: "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years" (Sen. Jay Rockefeller Oct. 10, 2002). "Saddam Hussein has officially thumbed his nose at the international community, and I think the President is approaching this in the right fashion" (Sen. Harry Reid Sept. 17, 2002). "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction" (Sen. Edward Kennedy Sept. 27, 2002).
Following the back-and-forth exchanges on Capitol Hill over the past weeks, I suddenly thought of an analogy to describe this developing state of affairs. Imagine that you are about to go on a business trip and need to catch a plane. The Democratic leadership is saying that you absolutely must take a plane, but it is a complete fallacy to assume that you need to purchase a plane ticket. How could this be? I cannot legally get on a plane without first purchasing a ticket - if you publicly support military action against Saddam Hussein, voted for that position, and have publicly reiterated the threat the regime posed to American national security interests, you can't now state that nowhere in any of these decisions did the thought of actually removing Hussein cross your mind.
Boris Ryvkin '09 is leaving on a jetplane.
