Running and Hiding Behind Clever Catch Phrases

Running and Hiding Behind Clever Catch Phrases

By Anthony Wade

As the glow fades from the second presidential debate, where John Kerry once again appeared more presidential, we must turn our attention to the stretch run and ensure that the Bush Cabal does not use clever catch phrases and non-substantive arguments to sway opinion. Coming out of Missouri , we see the tag line of choice down the stretch from Bush will be that Kerry can "run but he can't hide" from his record.

This strategy has two prongs. One, it allows Bush to distort Kerry's record hoping people will not be able to discern the spin before the elections. Two, and more important, is that Bush is using this strategy to try and make this election about Kerry's record instead of what it should be about, Bush's record. In essence, Bush is running and hiding from his own record by saying Kerry is running and hiding from his. We must be vigilant to make sure that we do not fall for this baseless form of propaganda and hold this president accountable for his horrific record the past four years.

The Kerry Record

I am not suggesting that Kerry's record is somehow not relevant to the election process. I am suggesting however, that the Bush record is far more important as he has already had four years as president to convince us that he knows what he is doing. This new strategy belies the fact that George W. Bush cannot possibly run on his record, so he wants to make the issue Kerry's record.

We see today the lies continue on the campaign trail. While campaigning Bush said, "With a straight face, he (Kerry) said, 'I only had one position on Iraq , he must think we've been on another planet. In the spring of 2003 as I ordered the invasion of Iraq , Sen. Kerry said it was the right decision. Now he says it's the wrong war. And he's trying to tell us he's had only one position. Who is he trying to kid? He can run, but he cannot hide."

Of course this is absolutely silly. Bush is comparing two statements separated by a year and omitting everything that actually happened during that year. For all of those who still get confused with all the dissembling by Bush allow me to show you how Kerry has been far more consistent than Bush.

John Kerry has always said that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He said it in the 1990s when Bush was still in Texas . When Bush was rushing our kids to die in the desert, he used intelligence from his own secret cell in the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans. This cell led by noted neocon, Douglas Feith, who had been called by General Tommy Franks the dumbest man on the planet, was put in place by Bush for the express purpose of cooking intelligence against Iraq so Bush could convince you and me of the legitimacy of this war. So Kerry did look at this intelligence and supported the VOTE TO GIVE THE PRESIDENT THE AUTHORITY TO WAGE WAR IF NECESSARY. Bush runs around telling you that Kerry voted for the WAR. That is a lie. He voted to give the president the authority to seek a military solution, but only if certain thresholds were met. I beg anyone who has truly bought the Bush lie about Kerry's changing positions to read the speech Kerry gave at this link:

http://www.independentsforkerry.org/uploads/media/kerry-iraq.html

This was the speech he gave on the senate floor BEFORE he cast that vote to give the president the power to wage war. No honest person can read this and conclude anything other than Senator Kerry being extremely consistent on this issue. I will reproduce the following statements from this speech here:

John Kerry has been very consistent. He said before he cast his vote that Bush had to meet certain criteria before going to war and Bush promised you, me, and Congress that he would. He lied and now our kids have died. His coalition is NOT representative of the international community. He has constantly snubbed his nose at nations that used to look up to us for leadership. We have 150,000 troops in Iraq and the NEXT largest contingent is Great Britain , who has 8,300. 85% of the coalition countries have 300 or less troops. How in the world is that fair? How is that a true coalition? It is not denigrating these countries to point out that they are truly not contributing to the cause. Last night Bush bullied the moderator to break the rules so he could try and make it seem that Kerry was demeaning the efforts of our coalition partners. The obvious fact when you look at the numbers listed above is that Bush put a coalition together in name only, so he can say he went in with the world. These countries are not partners, they are silent partners. The second threshold not met by Bush, which represents another broken promise is that inspections and sanctions were supposed to be given a fair opportunity to work before having to resort to war. Bush lied about this and rushed this country to war. His defense ever since was this litany of lies about how Saddam was deceiving the inspectors and how sanctions were not working. After the Duelfer report we now know that not only had Saddam disarmed, he disarmed a long long time ago. This means that the sanctions, which Bush STILL lies about in saying they were not working, had indeed worked before Bush even came into office.

Once these crucial thresholds were not met Kerry correctly pointed out that this is the wrong war. It was wrong because the rationale, the basis, the REASON we went in has now been proven to be a lie. You cannot support Bush's Machiavellian excuse of, "isn't the world better off without Saddam". That is not the point. We live in a representative democracy. If we allow these types of rationales then we have abandoned democracy. This is the record of George W. Bush, he wants to run from it, but he cannot hide.

The last smokescreen used by the Bush Junta is to say that Kerry could not prosecute this war if elected because he does not support it. They base this on the "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" comment. This is pure diversion at its best. Let's set the record straight. The way that BUSH ran this war was wrong. It was the wrong war because the WMD were not there and Saddam was a threat to NO ONE, as outlined in the Duelfer report. It was the wrong place because we needed to concentrate on terrorism and Osama Bin Laughing At Us. By diverting troops to Iraq , we have all but abandoned our hunt for the man behind 9-11 and that makes it the wrong time. Bush is fond of saying that Iraq is the center of the war on terror. What he omits is that HE made it the center of the war on terror. The invasion of a crippled Iraq , which had very few real terrorist ties have united the Islamic world against us, in Iraq . It is Bush's record that by invading Iraq , we are less safe. He wants to run, but he cannot hide.

The Bush Record - The flip-flopper-in-Chief is fond of telling you how steadfast he is. The truth is that Bush has changed his mind on over 30 policies in just four years. Nothing has been more disturbing than the cavalier way he has about changing the reason we even went to war in the first place. We all remember the first reason, Saddam NO DOUBT had WMD. We heard this repeated over and over again by all administration officials until we were beaten into submission by it. Here are just some of the statements:

These statements were all made prior to May 2003. They were said to us before the invasion as the justification. It was the REASON we went in and why our kids were asked to die. Without this reason, there is no legitimacy. However, about May 2003 we saw a switch in the wording from the administration when discussing WMD. It was subtle, but foreshadowing:

These quotes are quite different than the first set, no? The republicans have a word for this type of shifting in the wind. I believe they call it flip-flopping. While this was a subtle shift, we then saw the full tilt shift from Bush which denoted the unspoken admission from him that there were no actual WMD. This shift occurred during the next state of the union address when he said the following:

What??? How did we go from Saddam definitely had WMD, no doubt, it is confirmed, solid solid solid, to "related program activities"? This represents the third flip, or flop, in Bush's justification for sending your kids to die. Bush wants you to focus on the Kerry record, which has been consistent, because if you look deep enough at the Bush record, this is what you find. It got worse though.

Fast forward 10 months and now the Duelfer report reveals that Saddam not only did not have WMD, he also did not have weapons of mass destruction-related program activities. He had nothing and he had nothing for at least ten years. In the words of Inspector Duelfer, "we got it almost all wrong".

Undeterred, the Bush Cartel had to flip, or flop again in order to continue to try and keep this invasion legitimate. So with a complete absence of reason, we heard the following from the administration:

So now, if the story is that everyone knew there was no WMD, then why did we go to war? The illogic that follows is selective and insulting. The Bushies will now have us believe that the Duelfer report confirms the need for the war when it does the opposite. Their rationale now is that Saddam was "gaming the UN Oil for Food system" with an eye toward lifting sanctions that had crippled his country for ten years. Here are the problems with this line of thought:

1) By focusing on a small, inconsequential part of the 1500 page report, the Bushies have ignored other parts that dispel their justifications. What the Duelfer report also said is that what ambitions Saddam harbored for weapons were secondary to his goal of evading the sanctions, and he wanted weapons primarily not to attack the United States or to provide them to terrorists but to oppose his older enemies, Iran and Israel . We went to war because of an imminent danger told to us by Bush. There was no threat and the Duelfer report confirms that.

2) By focusing on the Oil for Food scandal, the administration is implicating some of our own American companies and coalition members which facilitated the scandal.

3) Hans Blix, former weapons inspector also said, "Had we had a few months more (of inspections before the war), we would have been able to tell both the CIA and others that there were no weapons of mass destruction (at) all the sites that they had given to us.

In light of these revelations Dick Cheney actually said, "Thus there was no reason to wait to invade Iraq to give inspectors more time to do their work". This disconnect should be frightening for everyone thinking about voting for these people. The justification for the war was that Saddam had WMD. Bush said he had them now and could pass them to terrorists. We were told that the smoking gun could be "in the form of a mushroom cloud". When confronted with the growing fact that there were no WMD, the administration flipped and flopped to say that they actually did not expect to find massive stockpiles. When that strategy became politically dangerous, they flipped and flopped and the story then became that Saddam had WMD-related programs. When that was debunked the flip and the flop became that Saddam had WMD-related-program-materials. Realizing the growing doubt, Bush said a few months ago that he would not comment until "Charlie gets back with his report". When Mr. Duelfer filed that report this week it became clear that not only did Saddam not have weapons but he hadn't possessed them in over ten years indicating the sanctions WORKED. In seeming desperation, the administration flips and flops YET AGAIN and drags in the UN Oil for Food scandal, as the NEW justification for the war. Never mind that American companies and coalition members are also implicated. Never mind that the Duelfer report states unequivocally that Saddam goal was to lift sanctions, not create weapons. Never mind that IF he did want to reconstitute weapons that they would NOT be transferred to terrorists or used against the United States . Never mind that this logic represents the fifth substantive change in Bush's reasoning for the war and that it is flawed at best.

Hide and Seek

John Kerry said Bush could have the war powers if he brought in a true international effort, and he did not. John Kerry said that Bush could have the war powers if he exhausted all UN sanctions and inspections, and he did not. George Bush said Saddam has weapons, weapons, weapons. The following year that morphed into the capability to contemplate the possibility of maybe one day considering to pursue weapons-related thingys, perhaps. Then when confronted with the harsh reality that all of this was lies, he comes to us again, refuses to admit he has made a mistake and has the nerve to say that John Kerry can run from his record but he can't hide. To use his own words, what planet is he on???

John Kerry has been consistent on his beliefs about Saddam and about how the war should have been managed. He has been consistent about how it needs to be managed from here forward. Last night Bush was asked to name three mistakes he has made in four years. Bush looked in the camera and could not name one. All he has left is clever catch phrases designed to cover up his own horrific record of flip-flopping on a subject that has killed over 1000 American soldiers. He says that you can run from your record but you cannot hide. I agree and it is time for him to look in the mirror.

Anthony Wade is co-administrator of a website devoted to educating the populace to the ongoing lies of President George W. Bush and seeking his removal from office. He is a 37-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites.  A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess.

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