Published on Saturday, November 12, 2005 by the Progressive

Bush Tries to Gag Critics in Veterans Day Speech
by Matthew Rothschild

In his Veterans Day speech, Bush took the low road.

Responding to critics who charge him with manipulating intelligence and hoodwinking the American people into war, Bush said: “It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began.”

And then he set about rewriting it.

He said, “Intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein.”

But at the time Bush launched the war, many intelligence agencies had severe doubts.

Britain’s did, as the Downing Street Memo of July 23, 2002 [2], clearly illustrated. It noted that the Bush Administration had “already made up its mind” to overthrow Saddam and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” The memo stated that “the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.”

Why then did Cheney say, on August 26, 2002, that Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction “to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us”?

Why then did Bush say, on March 17, 2003, that Saddam Hussein had “some of the most lethal weapons ever devised”?

Nor did the governments of France, Germany, China, and Russia buy Bush’s arguments in February and March of 2003.

There’s a good reason for that.

The United Nations weapons inspectors had reported back to the Security Council that they could find no weapons of mass destruction. And Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency and is the current Nobel Peace Prize-winner, said in no uncertain terms that Saddam Hussein had not reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, much less the nuclear weapons themselves, as Dick Cheney falsely claimed just days before Bush launched the war.

Then Bush, in a desperate ploy, invoked John Kerry’s words when the Senator supported the October 2002 authorization of force. Bush quoted Kerry as saying: “When I vote to give the President of the Untied States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat—and a grave threat—to our security.”

That was an embarrassing and indefensible vote and statement by Kerry. But Kerry himself now admits that Bush cooked the intelligence.

“This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition,” Kerry said after Bush’s speech.

What’s more, Bush said, “When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support.”

But that’s not exactly what Bush told Congress or what Congress was approving. The October 2002 authorization of force [3] was not a declaration of war; Bush did not seek one. It talks about “support for United States diplomatic efforts,” though it does give the President ridiculous leeway to “use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate” to defend against “the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and to “enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.”

Lowest of all, Bush suggested that even to question his veracity was to give aid and comfort to the enemy—the constitutional definition of treason.

“These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops, and to an enemy that is questioning America’s will,” he said.

That’s the last defense of this scoundrel: Wrapping himself in the flag, and denouncing anyone who dares to criticize him for deceitfulness as helping out the enemy and hurting the troops.

This is the tattered old Ashcroft card. Bush’s first attorney general, when questioned about his civil liberties infringements, said that such criticisms “only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends.”

But this ploy didn’t work for Ashcroft, and it won’t work for Bush. And it is profoundly un-American. As citizens, we are entitled to question our President’s policies—and, yes, his truthfulness.

And he’s certainly given us plenty of reasons to do so.

Matthew Rothschild has been with The Progressive since 1983. His McCarthyism Watch web column has chronicled more than 150 incidents of repression since 9/11. His exclusive web commentaries, This Just In, run on the website several times a week. Monday through Friday, he does two-minute web radio commentaries that are also available as podcasts, as is his weekly half-hour interview show, Progressive Radio. He co-founded and directs the Progressive Media Project.

Published on Sunday, November 13, 2005 by The New Republic
The Worst Speech of Bush's Presidency
by David Kusnet

For speechwriters drafting a presidential address for a patriotic holiday such as Independence Day, Memorial Day, or Veterans Day, there are three rules: Don't be wordy; don't be wonky; and, most important, don't be partisan. In his Veterans Day remarks today at the Tobyhanna Army Depot near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, President Bush and his staff broke all three rules, producing a strident speech that went on for almost 50 minutes, included a lengthy comparison of "Islamic radicalism" and "the ideology of communism," and concluded by attacking "some Democrats," while taking an implicit shot at "my opponent during the last election." It may have been the worst speech of his presidency.

At a time when Bush would benefit from sounding cheerful, forward looking, and above partisan politics, just as Ronald Reagan did during his second term even in the midst of the Iran-Contra scandal, Bush instead sounded like Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson during the worst days of the Vietnam War, although neither is remembered for flubbing a speech on a national holiday. It's as if Bush was reading from a cue-card that proclaimed, "Message: I'm embattled and embittered."

When a president speaks angrily and defensively for almost an hour, he might well be extemporizing, but that clearly was not true of this president and this speech: We know this because while the address may have seemed interminable, it was not ungrammatical, and it subjected listeners to a lecture about a bewildering array of personalities and events, including "Al Qaeda's number two man, a guy named Zawahari"; "his chief deputy in Iraq, the terrorist Zarqawi"; the Syrian democracy advocate Kamal Labwani; and "the Mehlis investigation into the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister."

There is a time and place for such a detailed explanation of world events, but it is a formal speech at a major academic institution such as Georgetown or West Point -- not a commemorative occasion such as today, when the president should speak as the leader of the entire nation.

Moreover, Veterans Day is certainly not the venue for a president to attack the opposition party or single out a defeated opponent, as Bush did today. Towards the end of his speech, Bush declared, "While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." He criticized "some Democrats and antiwar critics" for "claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war." Then he did something that no president in recent memory has done: He took what could be read as an implicit shot at the man he defeated, explaining, "Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in Congress this way." Bush then quoted Kerry's statement defending his vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq -- essentially holding Kerry up for ridicule, since Kerry is now a war critic. Do you remember Clinton criticizing Bob Dole in 1997; or Reagan criticizing Walter Mondale in 1985; or even Nixon criticizing George McGovern in 1973? Of course not -- second-term presidents tend to co-opt, not condemn, defeated opponents.

Bush's speech also adopted two of Nixon's smarmiest rhetorical techniques: attacking the nameless but nefarious "some," just as Nixon used to disagree with "some who say"; and lumping together very different people--the villainous "some Democrats," the "antiwar critics" who could be anyone from Russ Feingold to Ramsey Clark, and, finally, Kerry himself.

What's most remarkable about this speech is how Bush has bungee-jumped from the rhetorical high-road he usually takes to the lowest road any recent president has taken on a national holiday. Unlike previous presidents from both parties, Bush up until now has rarely attacked the opposition party, individual adversaries, or even ideological categories. (For instance, unlike Reagan and Nixon, he has rarely if ever criticized liberals or secularists.) So it is especially surprising that a president who generally avoided attacking his opponents in State of the Union speeches is now attacking them in a Veterans Day address; and it seems a sign that his shrewdest advisers -- Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, and Michael Gerson -- had no input into this speech.

As for the substantive points in the speech, they were either familiar or flimsy. Once again, Bush defended the Iraq war only after reporting on less controversial endeavors, such as the response to 9/11, the Afghanistan war, and efforts to destroy Al Qaeda.

Less familiar was Bush's lengthy comparison of Islamic extremism with the Communism of the Cold War era. Both, Bush said, were violent, dictatorial, and "dismissive of free peoples." But Communism was also atheist and internationalist, while Al Qaeda is neither. If current enemies have to be equated with twentieth-century totalitarianisms, why not compare Islamic extremism with fascism, which made more use of nationalist emotions and was less hostile to religion?

This was a speech that presented Bush's case implausibly and inappropriately. It's hard for a president to sound unpresidential on a patriotic holiday, but Bush achieved that dubious distinction today.

David Kusnet was chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton from 1992 through 1994. He is writing a book about workplace conflicts in today's America, Love the Work, Hate the Job, for John Wiley and Sons.

Click here for a video clip by True Majority about this speech.

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