Terry Eastland
Words reveal much about Bush: Maybe there is a reason he won't retract sentence
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Once upon a time, there was another president named Bush, and he, too, gave a speech that later gave him fits.
In 1989, during a nationally televised address on drug law enforcement, George H.W. Bush held up a bag of crack cocaine that he said had been seized right across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park. Mr. Bush's point was that the drug trade was so widespread that the stuff was being dealt right there in his own neighborhood.
Soon thereafter, Mr. Bush learned that there was more to the story about that bag of crack. A Drug Enforcement Administration official had lured to the park a dealer who then sold the crack to an undercover agent. The dealer hadn't done business there before, and for a reason that undercut Mr. Bush's point — dealers didn't see the park as a very good market!
Mr. Bush was upset — indeed aides said he was furious — that he hadn't known all of that before his speech. He made it clear that had he known the facts, he wouldn't have said what he did.
Mr. Bush thus could be said to have "taken personal responsibility" for his words, a phrase we hear a lot these days. In fact, we heard it Thursday during the White House press conference held by President George W. Bush (the son) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
As all the world knows by now, it was during his State of the Union address that Mr. Bush, in an effort to highlight Iraq's nuclear ambitions, spoke this 16-word sentence: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Earlier this month both CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the evidence wasn't good enough to support that sentence.
At the press conference, a reporter asked: "Mr. President, others in your administration have said your words on Iraq and Africa did not belong in your State of the Union address. Will you take personal responsibility for those words?"
It was fair to think Mr. Bush would say "yes." Surely the time for "closure" on a story dominating the news for two weeks had arrived. Somehow or other he would admit a mistake — that being, oddly, the only way to "take personal responsibility" in Washington.
But Mr. Bush didn't. "I take responsibility," he said, but it was "for putting troops into action" and "for making the decision ... to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein."
And there Mr. Bush stands. He won't disown the uranium-in-Africa sentence.
Is he simply being stubborn? Or is his refusal to concede error justified?
The latter must be judged a strong possibility. On Friday, the White House released portions of October's intelligence summary on Iraq's nuclear weapons. The consensus document — a national intelligence estimate — said that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium ore" in Somalia and Congo and Niger. The State Department's intelligence arm dissented from that proposition, but it was in the minority.
Having read the paper, White House speechwriters decided to work the point about Iraq's uranium shopping into the speech. And while Mr. Tenet and Ms. Rice now express doubt about the sufficiency of the U.S. evidence for the uranium allegation, the speechwriters did attribute it to "the British government."
And what do the British have to say? During the press conference, Mr. Blair emphasized that his government's intelligence on the uranium allegation is "genuine," adding, "We stand by it." And so, it is apparent, does Mr. Bush.
Notably, Mr. Blair, directing his comments to people "who think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention," said that "in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger." Not "we believe," but "we know for sure," and not "sought" uranium from Niger, but "purchased" it.
Doubtless we haven't heard the last about the most analyzed words Mr. Bush has uttered during his presidency. But at the moment it's hardly obvious that Mr. Bush should distance himself from what he said.
And what is obvious is that the Democrats, eyeing the 2004 election, are seizing on the sentence as key evidence in their case
that Mr. Bush misled the public. Indeed, one presidential hopeful, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, has even gone so far as to raise
the specter that Mr. Bush should be impeached. Could it be that the Democrats are the ones going too far?
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JWR contributor Terry Eastland is is publisher of The Weekly Standard.Comment by clicking here.
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