The Facts Machine

"And I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide"

Monday, October 07, 2002

Slate's William Saletan analyzes Bush's Iraq speech...

President Bush opened his Monday night speech on Iraq with two stories. "Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups," he began. "The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations." Then Bush turned to a second story: "On Sept. 11, 2001, America felt its vulnerability, even to threats that gather on the other side of the earth."

Throughout his speech, Bush tried to weave the two stories together. He argued that Iraq was entangled with al-Qaida and that Sept. 11 revealed new dangers in Iraq that required military action. He tried to show, as he has for months, that war in Iraq would be part of the war on terror. Instead, he confirmed the opposite. If Bush had evidence linking the two wars, this was his last plausible chance to divulge it. He didn't. It's clear that the two stories are objectively unrelated. The link between them is subjective: The events of Sept. 11 lowered our standards for using force.


Simply enough, this was Dubya's last, best chance to explain clearly why we should fight Iraq. He needed to tell us something new, but instead we heard the exact same nonsense and vaguery that we've heard for months.

I can never quite tell sometimes with Saletan (he fares better with simpler issues). In TFM's opinion, 9/11 shouldn't "lower our standards for using force". Of course, I'm against unilateral pre-emption, so that goes without saying. 9/11 should have lowered our standards at which we perceive there to be a necessity to pursue, for example, a "Manhattan Project for alternative and renewable energy" that Tom Friedman has proposed.

Anyway, Bush not articulating anything compelling or new in the case for war in Iraq, added to recent polls which show that the public would rather Bush focus on the economy, equals bad news for Karl Rove's 2002 (and 04) election plans.

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