"The Right Angle"

Heidi Parent

The Blame Game

On weapons of mass destruction

by Heidi Parent
03/16/04

I tried to hold off commenting on the Saddam/weapons of mass destruction brouhaha, but a discussion I had recently with a Democrat made me change my mind. Did he? Didn't he? Did Bush lie? Did our intelligence agencies let us down? Will Democrats be able to keep this fire burning until November? Will the media be able to pass up an opportunity to smear another Republican President? How badly will Katie Couric's lips chap from all her chop licking?

As I see it, the question isn't whether or not Saddam had weapons of mass destruction because we know he did; he used them in the past. So of course Bush didn't "make it up." Every President since at least George H.W. Bush (which includes Bill Clinton) believed Saddam had WMDs. Moreover, US intelligence agencies weren't alone in their belief - so did the UK, so did the UN, so did France and Germany. So did many other countries. Furthermore, before the war began I don't recall one opponent doubting the existence of weapons; their opposition rested primarily on the fact that Saddam's weapons didn't pose a threat. Nor can we forget the crowd who opposed the war on the grounds that our aggressive actions might cause Saddam to get really, really mad and use his weapons against us.

So once we accept the fact that the weapons existed, it becomes obvious that any questions about Bush's honesty is nothing more than self-serving political fodder by his opponents. And further proof that the Democrat Party's quest for power is the lens through which they view every issue. If they were capable, even for just one minute, of putting our national security ahead of their political desires, instead of calling Bush a liar they would be asking the most obvious question: since we know Saddam had WMDs, what happened to them? But sadly, "Damn the truth. How can we benefit from this?" is always first and foremost in the minds of Democrat party operatives.

But since the blame game is all the rage, let's play.

First, if our intelligence community's failure to provide accurate intelligence is to blame, Democrats shoulder much of the responsibility. After all, they were the ones who spent the 1990s imposing drastic cuts to the intelligence budget. As David Horowitz reminds us, Democrat Congressmen Bernie Sanders introduced legislation at the end of the Cold War that reduced the budgets for each intelligence agency a minimum of 10%. He justified his cuts on the grounds that "the Soviet Union no longer exists" and (quite unbelievably) that "low wages, homelessness, hungry children, and the collapse of our educational system are perhaps equally strong dangers to this Nation, or maybe a stronger danger for our national security."

Ninety-seven House Democrats voted for the Sanders cuts, including Dick Gephardt and Nancy Pelosi.

Sanders's attack on our intelligence agencies didn't end with his first proposal. He reintroduced similar legislation every year right up to September 11, 2001. And each time his proposal was supported by nearly half the House Democrats.

But Sanders wasn't alone in his attacks. Senator and current Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry also believed our intelligence agencies had become obsolete after the Cold War. In 1997 he was quoted in the Congressional Record asking, "Now that [the Cold War] struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow?" But Kerry's attacks weren't just verbal. In 1994 he introduced a bill to cut $1 billion from the budgets of the National Foreign Intelligence Program and the Tactical Intelligence Program. And the next year he introduced a bill to reduce the overall intelligence community's budget by $1.5 billion by the year 2000. In 1995 he also voted to cut the FBI's budget by $80 million.

But the Democrats' decimation of the intelligence community wasn't limited to just budget cuts. In the name of political correctness, they also placed Draconian restrictions on the activities of our spies and agents, prohibiting them from fraternizing with "unsavory" characters. (Apparently Bill & Co. believed the intelligence we could gather about terrorist groups from upstanding, law-abiding, "savory" citizens would be just as valuable as the intelligence we could gather from the "unsavory" folks who actually associated with them.) Former CIA director James Woolsey recognized the consequences of these changes and left his post just prior to their implementation saying, "Political correctness and fighting terrorism often don't work well together."

Incredibly, many of the Democrats who imposed these restrictions are now the very same ones questioning the ability of our intelligence agencies and demanding answers for their deficiencies. Taking liberty with a quote from author Tom Clancy, "First we crippled the CIA. Now we blame it."

A few other thoughts to consider. In the Democrat response to the President's State of the Union speech, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi said, "The President led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence." If the assertions were unproven and the evidence non-existent, why did so many Democrats vote to support the war? The truth is Democrats had access to the much of the same intelligence the president did, and they drew the same conclusion - Saddam had WMDs.

Next, it is quite possible that Iraq's WMDs have simply been moved to another location. If this is the case, had the Democrats not demanded our yearlong dance with the UN leading up to the war it is possible that the weapons would still be in Iraq. After all, their demands only afforded Saddam time to move them.

Finally, intelligence is just that, intelligence. It isn't certainty. And the track record of our intelligence community when it comes to WMDs is by no means perfect. The fact is, we have a history of underestimating WMD programs of other countries - the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War, India in the mid-70s, North Korea, India, and Pakistan in the 90s, and Libya just last year. The advancement of the WMD programs of all of these countries was estimated to be less advanced than they were in reality. Iraq seems to be the only place where we've overestimated. And please note the word used - overestimated. Not mis-estimated (to use a Bushism). Because, as established above, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

So now that the blame demon has been exercised, where do we go from here?

Democrats would have you believe otherwise, but WMDs were only part of the reason we went to war. Others include finally enforcing countless UN resolutions, liberating millions of people from a madman's tyranny, deposing a government sympathetic to terrorist groups, establishing a democracy in the Middle East, and making an example to other rogue governments (pretty successfully, too, it would seem. Qaddafi's certainly had a change of heart!) So contrary to what Howard Dean thinks, deposing Saddam has made us safer, and history will show President Bush made the right choice.

That leaves us with the question of what to do about our intelligence agencies. Of course the obligatory commission will be appointed to "look into the matter." But don't expect their findings to change the hearts and minds of opposition Democrats like Bernie Sanders and John Kerry. This means voters will have to change it for them. What these agencies do is not just important, it is downright crucial to our success in the War on Terror. Now that it appears John Kerry will be the Democrat nominee, hopefully voters will keep his track record on intelligence in mind when they step into the voting booth.