Last night at the
Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in Washington, George W. Bush cracked jokes while the audience was shown
supposedly humorous photos of the President and top aides.
There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.
According to Drudge, the Kerry campaign issued a press release which included the following:
If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought. Unfortunately for the President, this is not a joke.
585 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the last year, 3,354 have been wounded, and there's no end in sight. Bush Turned White House Credibility into a Joke George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But we still haven't found them, and now he thinks that's funny?
"George Bush didn't tell us the truth about the economy, about job loss, about the true cost of his deceptive prescription drug plan, or about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. There's nothing funny about that."
I couldn't find any such press release on the Kerry website, and the only place it pops up on Google News is on the right-wing World Net Daily, so there's a small chance that this release might be bogus; after all, Drudge has this at the top of his page, and since when does Drudge do us any favors?
But setting aside the possible intrigue regarding the release, this joke gives Kerry an excellent chance to do what few if any Democrats have done--ask George W. Bush if he's concerned that Al Queda has Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
Most of us accept that whatever weapons of mass destruction that Saddam had at the end of the Gulf war in 1991 either atrophied or were destroyed. There were weapons that couldn't be accounted for by the U.N. inspectors, but many of those were chemical weapons with a fixed shelf life, and they'd gone past their expiration date. Thanks to Joe Wilson and others, we know that there was no operational nuclear program in Iraq. But despite all that, the White House insists that the weapons existed.
So, Kerry should call Bush's bluff. Especially in a week in which Richard Clarke shot a torpedo through the hull of the S.S. Reelect Shrub, Kerry should exploit this opportunity by playing along with the assumption that there were WMD in Iraq a year ago, and we've lost the WMD. For rhetorical purposes, don't play it like the U.S. forces in Iraq cannot find the WMD, frame the attack as if the weapons that Bush said were in Iraq are no longer there and have apparently been lost to Al Queda.
Clarke's revelations are damaging because they depict Bush and his White House as lacking any interest in,or sense of urgency about, Al Queda and global terrorism. Attacking Bush for apparently letting the terrorists take possession of Saddam's WMD forces Bush into a box from which there is no escape. Bush would have two choices, both bad. He could admit that, despite Colin Powell's testimony before the U.N., we really didn't know of any locations with WMD. Thus, the Iraq war really is the diversionary boondoggle that Clarke and other terrorism experts said it would be. The other option is to stick to his contention that Saddam had massive stockpiles of WMD, and if he does that, Kerry just hammers home that therefore the only plausible conclusion is that the WMD fell out of Iraqi military and civil authority before we could secure them, and now they've been blown by the wind to who knows where. And if people accept that terrorists did get the WMD, Bush's jocularity on the subject of loose WMD fits right into the image painted of him by Richard Clarke.
Update [2004-3-26 14:31:17 by DHinMI]:
Reading the comments made me aware that the my orignal post was somewhat muddled. Yes, I believe it would benefit Kerry to call Bush's bluff to force the conclusion that Al Queda has absconded with the WMD Bush claims were in Saddam's possession and control. I did not intend, however, to suggest that Kerry should pursue that rhetorical strategy exclusively, although I see how my post could give one that impression. Rather, I'm suggesting that Kerry should frame the debate as an either/or. Either there was no threat from WMD, and the reason we haven't found the WMD is that they were never there, or the WMD had been in Iraq just as the administration told us, and the only plausible explanation for why they haven't been found is that during the anarchy after our undermaneed forces occupied the country, the WMD were stolen by Al Queda. This would leave Bush in a box, for even if he pushes back by saying that the WMD are now in Iran or Syria, that would put the lie to his claim that Saddam's capture has made us safer. Bush will look like the idiot who, afraid that he'll get stung, provokes a violent response from the hornets by blindly bashing their nest with a rake as if it were a pinata.
Sorry for the confusion. If you hadn't already decided that I was a moron, I hope this clarification will keep you from concluding that I'm so moronic that I think Kerry should dismiss the likelihood that Saddam had no WMD with which he threatened the security of the United States.