Kennedy Calls War
a 'Political Product' Marketed by Bush

HELEN DEWAR / Washington Post 15jan04

President Bush marketed the war on Iraq as a "political product" to influence the 2002 elections and is doing so again this year, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) charged yesterday in a scathing speech accusing Bush of putting politics ahead of national security.

In a speech to the liberal Center for American Progress, Kennedy said the war has increased hatred for the United States abroad, diverted attention from the broader war against terrorism and put the country more "at risk" than it was before.

Kennedy, a leading Democratic liberal who was among the small minority of lawmakers to vote against the congressional authorization for war in 2002, has been criticizing Bush on Iraq for months, but rarely in such a sweeping fashion. He accused the administration of distorting intelligence and pursuing an ideological agenda in building the case for war.

"No president of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war," he said. "In doing so, the president broke the basic bond of trust between the government and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) denounced the speech, calling it a "hateful attack against the commander in chief." He said Kennedy "insulted the president's patriotism, accused the Republican Party of treason, and resurrected the weak and indecisive foreign policy of Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis."

Kennedy referred approvingly to an assertion by former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill in a new book that Bush began planning for war against Iraq shortly after taking office in 2001. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has denied the assertion, but Kennedy indicated he believes it, praising O'Neill's "integrity, intelligence and vision" and saying the book has "now revealed what many of us have long suspected."

Kennedy said "the steamroller of war was moving into high gear" by fall of 2002. "The administration insisted that Congress vote to authorize the war before it adjourned for the November elections. Why? Because the debate in Congress would distract attention from the troubled economy and the troubled effort to capture [al Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden. The strategy was to focus on Iraq and do so in a way that would divide the Congress. And it worked."

Now, Kennedy said, "there is little doubt as well that the administration's plan to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people by this summer -- and the pressure to hold elections in Afghanistan at that time -- are intended to build momentum for the November elections in this country." The war, he said, "could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17897-2004Jan14?language=printer 14jan04

Kennedy Says
War in Iraq Was Choice, Not Necessity

SHERYL GAY STOLBERG / NY Times 15jan04

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 — In a blistering — and at times deeply personal — critique of President Bush and his policy on Iraq, Senator Edward M. Kennedy declared on Wednesday that Mr. Bush "broke the basic bond of trust between government and the people." He also accused the administration of marketing the war like a "political product" to help elect Republicans.

"We are reaping the poison fruit of our misguided and arrogant foreign policy," Mr. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a speech before the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy organization in Washington. "The administration capitalized on the fear created by 9/11 and put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth to justify a war that could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."

This is not the first time Mr. Kennedy, who has previously worked with Mr. Bush on education and health care, has lashed out at the administration on Iraq. But his remarks on Wednesday were more pointed and partisan than in the past.

The speech drew an immediate and harsh reply from Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House Republican leader. "His hateful attack against the commander in chief would be disgusting if it were not so sad," Mr. DeLay said, adding that Mr. Kennedy "insulted the president's patriotism."  [Mindfully.org note: What is truly sad is what DeLay understands patriotism as. The same goes for Bush and all who support him]

The White House response was more muted. "Let me remind you that the world is safer and better because of the action that we took to remove a brutal regime from power in Iraq," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said, adding, "The president worked to exhaust all diplomatic means possible before taking the action that we took."

Mr. Kennedy, who has served in the Senate for 40 years and is regarded by many as the chamber's leading liberal Democrat, often gives a major speech in January, typically focusing on domestic policy.

In the speech on Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy made the case that the administration used "scare tactics" to persuade Congress to approve a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, just as the hotly contested 2002 election campaigns were coming up, to distract attention from the economy and the failed effort to find Osama bin Laden.

The senator did not mince words. At one point, he called the administration "breathtakingly arrogant"; at another, "mean-spirited and vindictive." He also singled out Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, for particular criticism, labeling them "the axis of war" — a reference to the "axis of evil" phrase Mr. Bush has used to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

"War in Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity," Mr. Kennedy said. "It was a product they were methodically rolling out."

He went on to complain about a "gross abuse of intelligence," citing in particular the president's State of the Union address last January, when Mr. Bush said the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" — an allegation that American intelligence officials had previously discounted.

"No president of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of truth to take the nation to war," Senator Kennedy said. "If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war."

source: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2004/01/15/politics/15KENN.html&tntemail0=&pagewanted=print&position= 14jan04