Not Your Sweetie

Posted on BC Forum by Samela:
     "Felix, you have hit the core of the issue ..."

...and have said it so eloquently. Unleashing the policy of preemption is the crux of the matter, and it is a crucial matter, because it will be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle.
I'm trying to get the chronology of things straight in my head. Bush unveiled the preemption policy publicly, I believe, at a speech at the Westpoint graduation in May or June of 2002. (Correct me on the details if I am wrong here; I am relying on my fuzzy memory instead of research.) It was a major and wholly unprecedented shift in US policy, and thus worthy of significant debate that really never took place.
The vote on the Iraq resolution came in October (?) of 2002. At that point, again if my memory serves correctly, our public discussion focused largely on the legitimacy of a preemptive attack, although the question of whether Iraq actually had WMDs was being discussed. (This was the period during which Scott Ritter was on TV a lot.) I recall thinking at that time that Congress, of course (or at least members of the intelligence committees), must have access to intelligence information that we did not, and that therefore it was difficult to assess the real status of WMDs. My thinking at the time was that the real issue involved the novel application of the unilateral policy of preemption, not whether Iraq actually did or did not have biological or chemical weapons. Many of us conceded that they probably did have some. But we still opposed the resolution that would give Bush free hand in initiating a unilateral, preemptive war in the absence of any "imminent" threat. We kept saying, if you have some evidence of an imminent threat, then show it to the UN. Do an Adlai Stevenson. That wasn't happening yet. I wrote to both Senator Kerry and Representative Markey before the vote, and called their offices, expressing my conviction that they should oppose the resolution. Both voted for it. I am inclined to believe that Rep. Markey was indeed misled on intelligence, because the letter I received from him (I never received one from Kerry), after the vote, explained his grave concern with the nuclear aspect of the thing .... he has been a long, long-time leader in the fight for non-proliferation. His letter was extensive and explicit. If he had been given the information in the El Baradei report, I do wonder if he would have voted differently. I may write him and ask.
But back to my chronology. It was only later, during the buildup to the war in the subsequent months, as peace marches and rallies began to be held and grow and as the administration began to make their case at the UN and in the SOTU address, that information contradicting the validity and strength of their evidence began to become really apparent to us. (The photos of trucks outside a building that Powell held up; the fake Niger document---which was known by us BEFORE the invasion; the El Baradei report that debunked the nuclear claims and said the aluminum tubes were not for this purpose.)
It was at this point, if I am correct (either just before or just after the war), that Tom Harkin came out and said he was lied to, and that he would not have voted for the resolution if he had known. I said then that every Democrat who voted for that resolution should be coming out and saying "we were lied to and we wouldn't have voted that way if we had known." No one did.
So, Kerry if finally saying it, or at least the "lied to" part of it. I asked him to do that, and whether it is true or not (I expect not ... I feel he would have voted anyway), at least he said it. He has not, however, said he would have voted differently because of this. That is the crucial next step, and I urge him to say it.
It is the only way he can extricate himself from the charge that he fully supports the preemptive policy (which, after all, he DID support at the outset of the war, in a statement you all know I was very angry about). But this is a step forward. It's a political step, but I can accept that. He has to go further, however.
© samela 2003. All rights reserved.