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March 19, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: The Divine is in the details
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Israel's New Enemy: America?
JWisdom.com Love me not? with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Orwell, Santayana, and Me
Jonathan Tobin: How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth?
March 16, 2010
Steven Emerson: Combating Lawfare
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Father's obligations toward minor children
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Judith Graham: Get the whole picture before a CT
March 12, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades
March 11, 2010
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk
Feb. 19, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

Jewish World Review Nov. 11, 2005 / 9 Mar-Cheshvan, 5766

The gullible party

By Rich Lowry


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Getting suckered usually is not a sign of good judgment. On the contrary, it's something to be embarrassed by. But Democrats are making the contention that they were told lies prior to the Iraq War, and believed them, central to their party's identity.

They are caught between their base's conviction that President Bush lied about Iraq and the fact that the cream of the party voted to authorize the war. Nearly every Democratic senator who has higher ambitions voted "yes" — Hillary Clinton, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, John Kerry and John Edwards. If Bush lied, it stands to reason that they are all naifs, foolishly drawn to the seductions of a charlatan. They aren't statesmen; they're victims.

Some of the "aye" votes make this argument themselves. "He misled every one of us," Sen. Kerry charges. Sen. Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, since retired, agrees: "We were misled." The talented New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who voted for the war in the House, explains, "If you believe that people like me and [Sens.] Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton drew the wrong conclusion at the time, well, that's true of a lot of Americans who were deceived by this president."

Surely, however, these Democrats don't rely on Bush exclusively for their information. In a demolition of the Bush-lied argument in the current issue of Commentary magazine, Norman Podhoretz recalls the other players who warned of Saddam Hussein's WMD. Democrats could have consulted Bill Clinton, who had talked of the "threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program." They could have read the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that maintained "Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs." They could have asked the State Department, which believed Saddam had chemical and biological weapons. They could have listened to former U.N. weapons inspectors, a group of whom said in the presence of Iraq expert Kenneth Pollack in 2002 that they all believed Iraq had WMD.

The Democratic "aye" votes contend they were further misled because they assumed that Bush would carry out the war competently. This is another way of saying that they thought it would go smoothly. But Bush said the war might be difficult. Democrats were free to believe this admonition and conclude that the war was too risky. Pro-war vote Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia complains that we thought "we could be welcomed as liberators," but it turns out that "we don't know anything about the Middle East." Did he believe in 2002 that we were soaked in a nuanced knowledge of the Middle East? And what precisely did Bush say to convince him of that?

When Democrats claim they were duped, they are sidestepping an inconvenient truth: Many of them supported the war for the same reasons as the president. We now know Saddam didn't have WMD stockpiles, but the only reason we know it with any certainty is that we crushed his regime. To pretend that, absent Bush's deceptions, everyone would have known with exactitude the reduced state of Saddam's weapons programs is juvenile and contemptible, especially from Democrats who want to shimmy their way out of their pro-war votes.

This is where the Howard Dean Democrats deserve a glimmer of admiration. They were against the war, period. Even when things seem to go well in Iraq, they hold firm. Dean was unswayed by the capture of Saddam two years ago. They don't sully themselves with after-the-fact rationalizations and evasions, and have the courage of their paranoid and wrongheaded convictions.

But their drumbeat of "Bush lied" puts their party's leaders in a bind. If Bush was a misleader, many top Democrats were misleadees. Dick Polman, a political reporter for Knight-Ridder News, reminds us that Republican George Romney damaged his presidential bid in 1968 by claiming he had been deceived by the military into supporting the Vietnam War. Voters weren't looking for a president who could, by his own account, be easily misled. Gullibility is not a leadership trait.

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© 2005 King Features Syndicate

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