Blunt assertions, no evidence, no investigation

July 21, 2003

The Wash­ing­ton Post has an arti­cle about the Bush White House­’s com­mon prac­tice of mak­ing unat­trib­uted state­ments about Iraq with­out get­ting CIA feed­back. Some of the whop­pers include:

Sept 26: Iraq “could launch a bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal attack 45 min­utes after the order is given.“Sept 28: “there are al Qae­da ter­ror­ists inside Iraq”

Oct 7: “Sad­dam Hus­sein aids and pro­tects ter­ror­ists, includ­ing mem­bers of al Qaeda.”

All of these claims were strong­ly dis­put­ed by intel­li­gence experts at the time and only the most die-heart Adminstration-booster would want to claim now that any of them are true.

The 45 minute claim has got­ten a thor­ough rebuk­ing in the U.K.

This is the sec­ond time in as many weeks where a Bush quote has sud­den­ly tak­en me back to the Rea­gan years. That 45 minute claim just echos in my head of Rea­gan’s “the San­din­istas are just two days dri­ve from Har­lin­gen, Texas.” They both have that “oh my god, the bar­bar­ians are at the door” urgency. Both also posit an arch-enemy that turned out to be a paper tiger when all the pro­pa­gan­da was peeled back. (For the young’ins out there, Rea­gan respond­ed to the two-drive fear by min­ing Nicaragua’s har­bors, an act which was lat­er declared ille­gal by the World Court).

No More Coincidences: Big Bill’s Zipper Strikes Again

December 16, 1998

Back in Feb­ru­ary, I con­clud­ed my “Stop the Zip­per War Before it Starts” with the following:

Noth­ing’s real­ly changed now except U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests. Hus­sein is still a tyrant. He’s still stock­pil­ing chem­i­cal weapons. Why are U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests dif­fer­ent now? Why does Bill Clin­ton want U.S. media atten­tion focused on Iraq? Look no fur­ther than Big Bil­l’s zip­per. Stop the next war before it starts. Abol­ish every­one’s weapons of mass destruc­tion and let’s get a Pres­i­dent who does­n’t need a war to clear his name.

I put this at the bot­tom of the piece because then the idea that Clin­ton might have done this was still way out there.

Since then most every major turn­ing point in the Pres­i­den­t’s scan­dals has been echoed by mil­i­tary maneuverings.

On August 17th Clin­ton gave a tele­vised address which was wide­ly crit­i­cized as being “too lit­tle, too late” and non-repentant enough. Pub­lic opin­ion turned sharply against him. Three days lat­er Big Bill sent 100 cruise mis­siles into Afghanistan and Sudan in order to assas­si­nate Osama bin Laden, the pre­vi­ous­ly unknown arch­en­e­my of the Unit­ed States.

And now, on the after­noon before the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives was sched­uled to begin pro­ceed­ings on his Impeach­ment, Clin­ton has ordered an attack on Iraq. Con­gress will of course delay the vote. Rumors are that this new bomb­ing cam­paign might last more than a few days, and come Jan­u­ary’s new Con­gres­sion­al term there will be five less Republicans.

Each time these coin­ci­dences hap­pen, a few pun­dits that mut­ter about “Wag the Dog” sce­nar­ios before assur­ing the audi­ence that Clin­ton would nev­er do that. Every­one talks about coin­ci­dence and then moves on.

But coin­ci­dence has been Clin­ton’s friend through­out his scan­dals. Remem­ber the long-lost White­wa­ter doc­u­ments that mys­te­ri­ous­ly appeared on Hillary Clin­ton’s coffee-table when inves­ti­ga­tors were threat­en­ing to issue here a sub­poe­na? Remem­ber the job offers that Clin­ton cronies arranged for key wit­ness­es just before they either recant­ed their sto­ries or lied under oath? All of Clin­ton’s scan­dals have been of the “who cares” variety-shady land deal­ings twen­ty years ago in Arkansas, his hav­ing sex with an intern in the Oval Office. They dis­played a lack of judg­ment and char­ac­ter, but were not Impeach­able. But his scan­dals have grown and tak­en a life of their own as Clin­ton and his wife have been vis­it­ed by an ever-growing amount of coincidences.

Enough is enough. How much more are we to believe? As I write this the mis­siles are scream­ing over Bagh­dad and Iraqis are dying hor­ri­ble deaths. This is real. This is not some polit­i­cal game. It is time for Amer­i­cans to stop deny­ing that these coin­ci­dences are real­ly coincidental.

It is time to demand Clin­ton’s resignation.

And if he refus­es, then it is time to sub­poe­na White House records on the last year of mil­i­tary actions. If they show that Clin­ton has mur­dered in his des­per­ate attempt to save his Pres­i­den­cy, then it is time not only to impeach him but to put him into jail.