Toronto Times Editorial: Bush cried 'wolf' on Iraq's threat

Feb. 10, 2004. 01:00 AM - Toronto Times
Editorial: Bush cried 'wolf' on Iraq's threat

A year ago U.S. President George Bush warned the world that Saddam Hussein was "a grave and gathering danger" who "continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," making him "an urgent threat to America."

"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations," Bush warned. He cited, approvingly, a British report that Iraq could launch weapons on 45 minutes' notice.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, too, saw a "mortal threat." Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Iraq a "terrorist state." Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser, evoked the spectre of a "mushroom cloud."

It was all scare tactics. We now know Saddam had no serious ties to the 9/11 terrorists, and he had bowed to the United Nations and scrapped his nuclear, chemical and biological programs. The British report was bogus. Bush was crying wolf, and he's now scrambling to justify a $150 billion war, 600 U.S. and allied deaths and 13,000 Iraqi deaths.

All this was dismally evident in Bush's weekend interview with NBC, where he trotted out a feeble and incoherent Version B rationale for war.

After describing himself as a "war president" who makes decisions "with war on my mind," Bush vilified Saddam as a "madman" a half-dozen times. He said the U.S. had "run the diplomatic string in Iraq" (that is, exhausted diplomatic options) before attacking. He said Iraq "could have developed a nuclear weapon over time." So this was "a war of necessity."

Version B may have played well with Bush's core Republican constituency, but it isn't any more believable than Version A.

Saddam may have been a brutal despot with the blood of many Iraqis on his hands, but he's not a "madman." Indeed, he may be tried for his crimes. Moreover, the U.N. Security Council disagreed profoundly that Bush had exhausted all diplomatic means. U.N. inspectors begged for more time, to test Saddam's claim that he had disarmed. Bush refused, and attacked.

Had the U.N. inspections continued, Saddam couldn't have developed a nuclear or any other nightmare weapon. So the notion that this was a "war of necessity" is laughable. This was a "pre-emptive" strike, period.

In recent months Bush has also test-driven another line of argument, Version C, saying Iraqis are now better off. Yet Paul Wolfowitz, the hawkish deputy defence secretary, frankly admits that Saddam's brutality was "not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did." So Version C fails, too, as a reason for invading.

The polls suggest Bush has struck out three times with these ever shifting rationales. More Americans now mistrust him than trust him.

Prime Minister Paul Martin must keep this flailing in mind, if Bush proposes to use force against other threats "before they become imminent." Americans were sent to war on false pretences. Allies don't have to oblige.