[Mb-civic] HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Bush's patriotism smear - H.D.S. Greenway - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

  Bush's patriotism smear

By H.D.S. Greenway  |  November 29, 2005

GEORGE W. BUSH and his supporters are past masters at impugning the 
reputations and patriotism of opponents, no matter how unimpeachable 
their reputations might be.

It was therefore amusing to watch the White House switch into reverse 
after Representative Jean Schmidt of Ohio lectured her congressional 
colleague, retired Marine Colonel John Murtha of Pennsylvania, about how 
''cowards cut and run, Marines never do." White House spokesman Scott 
McClellan compared Murtha to the lefty filmmaker Michael Moore after 
Murtha suggested a six-month timetable pulling troops out of Iraq. House 
Speaker Dennis Hastert said that war critics would ''prefer that the 
United States surrender to terrorists who would harm innocent 
Americans," and, as usual, Vice President Cheney played the heavy.

When asked about Cheney's criticism, Murtha, a combat veteran, said: ''I 
like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people 
to war and then don't like suggestions about what needs to be done." 
Murtha was referring to the fact that Cheney, who had ''other 
priorities" than fighting for his country, sought and received five 
deferments during the Vietnam War.

Then it dawned on the White House that, with the president's approval 
ratings in the cellar, perhaps it was not a good idea to launch personal 
attacks on such a man as Murtha, who has spent his congressional career 
backing and helping the military.

So, overnight, the rhetoric changed. From Bush in Asia to Cheney in 
Washington, Murtha became an honorable American -- misguided, perhaps, 
but no longer a coward or someone who wanted to have terrorists harm 
Americans. Schmidt, who appears not to have known who Murtha was, sort 
of apologized and had her remarks struck from the Congressional Record.

Letting up on Murtha didn't mean letting up on war critics, however. 
Cheney said that senators who suggested that he and the administration 
had manipulated prewar intelligence to fit their preconceived decision 
to invade Iraq were making ''one of the most dishonest and reprehensible 
charges ever aired in this city." This by the man who went back to the 
CIA again and again, leaning on them to find evidence to support an 
invasion of Iraq; this by an administration that spread a net of 
misinformation about Saddam Hussein-Al Qaeda links, a charge that the 
CIA refused to confirm but that Cheney kept making anyway.

Yet for all of that, lying about WMD is too strong a word to use. It 
isn't that the administration knew there were no weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq. The point is that the administration wanted to 
invade Iraq anyway, and WMD were only the most acceptable excuse. As 
antiterrorism expert Richard Clarke noticed right after 9/11, the Bush 
team was determined to use that national tragedy to push their Iraq 
agenda. Rumsfeld is quoted as saying after 9/11 that it would be better 
to start with bombing Iraq -- which had nothing to do with 9/11 -- 
rather than Afghanistan, in which Al Qaeda dwelt.

I am sure that the Bush administration thought there would be at least 
some weapons of mass destruction lying around in Iraq to justify its 
war. Indeed, it seemed reasonable that there might be and surprising 
that there were none. But weapons of mass destruction were the excuse, 
not the reason, for the war, and that was the deception perpetuated on 
the American people. The real reason was to get rid of a potential 
problem even if there was no immediate danger, control an oil-rich 
country that could be made friendly to Israel, and promulgate 
neoconservative theories about the transformational powers of democracy 
in the Middle East -- none of which would have been acceptable to 
Congress or the people as a cause for war.

And so by accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative, as the 
old song goes, they manipulated the available intelligence. Uninterested 
in anything that didn't support their Iraq plans, the Bush team ran 
through all the intelligence yellow lights, and some red ones, in order 
to sell their war. Bush's statement that Congress saw the same 
intelligence as he did is most certainly not true.

One longs for the straightforward arm-twisting of Lyndon Johnson in 
support of his lost war. When Idaho Senator Frank Church advocated 
negotiating with Hanoi, LBJ asked him whom he had consulted. When Church 
answered ''Walter Lippmann," the distinguished columnist, LBJ said: 
''All right, Frank, next time you want a dam for Idaho you go talk to 
Walter Lippmann."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/29/bushs_patriotism_smear/
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