SOTU Speak 2 By Donnel Jones, January 20, 2004	Home   Search   Forum   Terms

A good friend, who keeps me honest, asked me to elaborate on this sentence from yesterday's blog: I think you know we won't wait for the spit to hit the fire.

Because spit flies fast, buddy, and it hits fire with a fizz. Becomes vapor in an instant, which is about as much time it will take for Bush's enemies to smell blood and head for his jugular if he seeks to explain in tonight's State of the Union address the WMD situation in Iraq. Or, should I say, the absence of WMD in Iraq.

Andrew Sullivan, in a superb interview for FrontPageMag, has this to say about WMD and Bush's doctrine of pre-emption.

I should say up-front that I don't think we can over-look the failure of the US to find tangible stockpiles of WMDs. It's a big embarrassment, and a big dent in the pre-emption doctrine. It doesn't change my view of the war, but it does shift my position on pre-emption. If our intelligence is that bad, then it seems to me hard to base potential wars upon it.

Which also means not finding WMD hurts the war effort. It is a credibility issue, not because Bush's enemies are right to claim he lied but that the intelligence was bad and he chose to err on that far from perfect intelligence. He had to have known the intelligence was bad. He must have realized that the international community didn't have any better intelligence or he would have had it in his possession.

Although no reliable source would explicitly deny the presence of WMD in Iraq, he knew he was working in the dark more than he let on. It was a huge gamble, and he chose to act upon it. I happen to believe he was correct to act, to go in and remove Saddam, but we can't spin this to assume that Bush was not aware of the real possibility of WMD not being found. He knew he would risk political embarrassment and make himself vulnerable. Conviction and the strategy of this war mandated he do it, regardless of polls that did not show overwhelming support for the first enactment of the pre- emption doctrine. He staked his political capital on it. The Democrats can't take this from him.

The implications to all this may not be dire unless Iraq tanks. al Sistani and his growing populist following among Shi'ite Iraqis leave me concerned. Tangible progress toward social and political stability in Iraq will be crucial during Bush's campaign. That might not mean dramatic change for the better but it has to mean the situation will not fall into the hands of Islamists by way of the back door. Because his doctrine of pre-emption is dead in the water—at least for the foreseeable future—Bush needs some real and rational reform in Iraq, something beyond rhetoric and hope.

What can Bush say about the absence of WMD? He would have to spin his way out. Which means he'll end up looking like Clark & Dean (the name kinda makes you think of a strip-mall chain, don't it?). But he no longer has to worry about those two. Bush has got to be ready for a Kerry or Edwards to take him on in November. The stakes just got higher last night when the Democrat Party proved it can be grown up when the moment demands. Clark and Dean are children. They're worse than amateurs, however professional in their other careers. Boys must leave. The men stay. Bush has more riding tonight because of last night.

I was hoping for a Dean victory but that would be too easy. No, we have to work for this White House. That means two things up front: Bush won't explain the WMD situation in his speech tonight and he better sell his Santa goods with real gusto since he is now the reincarnation of Lyndon B. Johnson.

We only hope the resemblance stops there. Because the last thing we need is another eruption of the Vietnam syndrome.