Memo to Sen. Pat Roberts: According to a National Journal story, President Bush personally received two classified reports before the Iraq war casting doubt on two of his main arguments for going to war — that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat (analysts argued that he wouldn’t attack unless attacked first), and that he was acquiring high-strength aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons (Energy Department experts determined the tubes were for conventional weapons).
But Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and others continued to use these arguments to help sell the public on the invasion.
This could be further material for Sen. Roberts’ “phase two” intelligence failure report, which we’re still waiting for. . . .
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Here is an interesting issue Robert D. Kaplan raises in an op-ed in The Washington Post:
“President Bush has posited that the American experience with democracy is urgently useful to the wider world. True, but there is another side of the coin: that America basically inherited its institutions from the Anglo-Saxon tradition and thus its experience over 230 years has been about limiting despotic power rather than creating power from scratch. Because order is something we’ve taken for granted, anarchy is not something we’ve feared. But in many parts of the world, the experience has been the opposite, and so is the challenge: how to create legitimate, functioning institutions in utterly barren landscapes.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Everyone is for improving U.S.-India relations (historically on the cool side), especially considering India’s growing economic and strategic importance to America.
But President Bush’s recently announced nuclear deal with India must also pass the national security test, and on that point, there are a lot of questions.
Bush would grant India access to U.S. civilian nuclear fuel, technology and know-how in exchange for putting 14 of India’s 22 nuclear reactors under international safeguards.
But the deal would also violate the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that restricts nuclear commerce to treaty signatories (India never signed, and it has the bomb).
Would this give the green light to other nations to ignore the rules and pursue their own side-alley nuclear deals? Shouldn’t the United States be enforcing nonproliferation right now, not loosening the rules?
Congress, which must approve this deal, should weigh these serious risks against the benefits.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Though many will see him as the pot calling the kettle black, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., made a persuasive case against politicizing national security in a commentary in The Hill newspaper. “The problem has become apparent to me as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,” Roberts wrote. “While some of my colleagues talk about oversight, they seem less interested in fixing the intelligence community’s problems than in the political benefit to be achieved by exploiting them. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that many in the minority would prefer to serve on ‘the Committee Against Everything the Bush Administration Does.’” He also called the leaking of the warrantless wiretapping “criminal,” and chided Democrats for flip-flopping on the program upon realizing it was supported by two-thirds of the American public. Roberts’ defensive tone somewhat diminishes his righteous point: that Americans can’t afford to have their lawmakers squabbling while terrorists are busy plotting.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
William Lindsay White wrote a prayer for rain that was printed in the Emporia Gazette during the Kansas drought of 1935. Given how dangerously dry Kansas is again, this shortened version of his prayer bears reprinting:
“O Lord, in thy mercy grant us rain, and by that we don’t mean a shower.
“O Lord of Hosts, we want to look out the windows and watch the regiments of close-packed raindrops march diagonally down. We want to hear the gurgle of the gutters under the eaves, and then the sputter of the downspout.
“God of Israel, Isaac and Jacob, let it come down so hard, let the drops dance so high that the streets and sidewalks seem covered with a 6-inch fog of spatter-drops. Then let it just keep up for a while, and then begin to taper off, and then turn right around and get a lot worse, swishing, pounding, splattering, pouring, drenching, the thunder coming — crackity-bam — and the lightning flashing so fast and furious you can’t tell which flash goes with which peal of thunder.
“Kansas is indeed the promised land, O Lord, and if it gets a break it will flow with milk and honey. But we can’t live much longer on promises. So in thine own way in thine own time, make up thy mind, O Lord, and we will bow before thy judgment, and praise thine everlasting name. Amen.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee