The Democrats Big Lie Campaign

From Front Page

Here is just a sample.

How does this Big Lie operate? A look at today’s top headline in the New York Times (whose example is faithfully followed in most of the nation’s press) illustrates it well: “Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie.” That is the news of the day – similar in its negative spin for the Bush campaign to the news of the last 30 or 60 days as well. The Times headline refers to the report of the 9/11 commission that Mohammed Atta did not meet with Iraqi government officials in Prague prior to 9/11 and that it could find no evidence that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 plot. The Times “News Analysis” accompanying the account draws this conclusion: “In questioning the extent of any ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the commission weakened the already spotty scorecard on Mr. Bush’s justifications for sending the military to topple Saddam Hussein.”

Actually this Times reportage is several lies in one. First, the panel did not conclude that there was no al Qaeda-Iraq tie. It concluded that it could not find an al Qaeda-Iraq tie in respect to the attacks of 9/11. This is entirely different from the claim that there were no links between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime. There are in fact extensive links, which Stephen Hayes and others have detailed.

But that is just the beginning. The bigger lie in this particular claim is that Mohammed Atta’s visit to Prague was one of “Mr. Bush’s justifications for sending the military to topple Saddam Hussein.” Mr. Bush made no such claim, certainly not in connection with a justification for the war in Iraq. (The Times actually prints Bush’s references to Iraq and al-Qaeda links on February 8, 2003, none of which mentions 9/11.) The justification for sending the military to topple Saddam Hussein was the violation of UN Resolution 1441 – and 16 UN resolutions before that. Resolution 1441 authorized the use of force as of December 7, 2002, the deadline that had been set by the Security Council on November 8, 2002.

Anyone doubting that Saddam violated this resolution can consult the recent memoir written by chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq. Blix opposed the military option right to the end. But he states very clearly in his book that Saddam failed to meet the requirements of UN Resolution 1441, that he showed his contempt for them in fact, and that they were a legal justification for force.

The lie about al-Qaeda is just one of a tissue of lies concocted by Administration critics about the rationale for the war in Iraq, each of which is designed to distract attention from the moral worthiness of the war and the critics’ own unhappiness with the war on terror itself. The Times’ “News Analysis” also cites the failure to find WMDs as a further undermining of the Administration’s rationale for the war. But WMDS were not the rationale for the war. The rationale for the war was Saddam’s violation of UN Resoloution 1441, which called for compliance or “serious consequences.” Saddam did not comply. The consequences followed.



The President’s rationale for the war was contained in his September 12, 2002 address to the United Nations General Assembly. He did not refer to an al-Qaeda link. He did not refer to an “imminent threat” (the third malicious falsification put forward by proponents of the Big Lie). What the President said was this: “The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”

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In either case – and in both cases – what we are confronting in this spectacle is an unprecedented event in American political life. In the midst of a good war and a noble enterprise, a major American party is engaged in an effort to stab its own country in the back for short term political gain, and is willing to do to so by the most underhanded and unscrupulous means.

Nice to see someone calling them "lies" instead of "spin".
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