Bush snatched defeat from the jaws of victory

By
Saul Landau                                                                          Read Spanish Version

Historians
will view Bush as the president who snatched defeat from the jaws of
victory. A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), made public on
December 4, concluded Iran had closed its nuclear weapons program
four years earlier. Bush could have attributed this “fact” to his
aggressive rhetoric (threats). Instead, he whined at his press
conference that day: “Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous,
and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to
make a nuclear weapon. The NIE says that Iran had a hidden — a
covert nuclear weapons program. That’s what it said. What’s to
say they couldn’t start another covert nuclear weapons program?”

He
seemed more compelled by his own words than by intelligence findings.
Recall that in his January 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush —
or speech writers — had placed Iran inside the elite Axis of Evil
club.

OK.
And now he could claim his
threats worked. He got Iraq, North Korea, and Iran to stop nuclear
weapons
program (albeit Iraq didn’t have one). Bush could claim he even got
Libya to quit the incipient nuclear club.

I
can imagine him sporting his ubiquitous shit-eating grin and taking
credit for international accomplishments. “Thanks to my inserting a
perilous tone to my public discourse — one that has weighed on
public consciousness like a toxic cloud — we won.”

Bush
could have referred to post 9/11 days when the nation trembled in
shock, and he swore “to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from
threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass
destruction.” He then characterized North Korea as “a regime
arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving
its citizens.” Iran aggressively pursues “these weapons and
exports terror.” The lead villain at that time, lest we forget:
“Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to
support terror…”

These
states “and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil,
arming to threaten the peace of the world.” Bush swore “the
United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous
regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”

So,
why didn’t Bush return to this theme and say “I didn’t permit
it?”

Perhaps
facts did play a strange role. Since thinking people understand that
Iran did not threaten the United States or Western Europe, they will
also recall how Bush’s “accomplished” mission in Iraq showed a
less than accomplished President. Indeed, the hysteric in the White
House invaded Iraq over non existent WMD.

Did
Bush fear that boasting of another “mission accomplished would
cause him more trouble? The NIE information on Iran combined with
North Korea agreeing to dismantle its nuke program in exchange for
fuel aid and normalization talks with the U.S. and Japan had
dispelled Bush’s Harry Potter-like world of evil axes.

Nevertheless,
Bush bleated about “dangerous” Iran. Keith Olberman of MSNBC
called him a” pathological presidential liar, or an
idiot-in-chief.” Why didn’t Karl Rove rescue him from such
blasphemies? (Was he too busy writing “how to beat Hillary columns
for Newsweek?)

Bush
knew since early August that Iran had no operating nuclear weapons
programs; so why, asked Olberman, did he on October 17 taunt Iranian
President Ahmadinejad? “I’ve told people that if you’re
interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be
interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a
nuclear weapon.”

The
answer: Bush apparently feels comfortable with inflammatory
discourse; not with achievement oratory. Remember his July 24, 2004
fighting words:
“Bring ‘em on” he taunted the Iraqi insurgents on July 2, 2004,
who had begun to attack US occupying forces.
Maybe he recalls those words and the fiasco following his “Mission
Accomplished” speech in May 2003 as Iraqi insurgent began killing
and wounding US troops — and his ratings plummeted. For Bush, fear
has worked well; especially scary are references to nuclear threats.

Compare
President Franklin Roosevelt calming discourse to Bush’s alarmism.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” said FDR in his
1933 Inaugural Address, when the Great Depression truly depressed
millions of people, economically and mentally. Bush, in contrast,
seems to feel comfortable as America’s year-round Halloween
monster. “We have plenty to fear. Terrorism will never go away. The
terrorists are everywhere, always plotting against us. Trust me to
fight them as long as you people remain scared”

With
that outlook, Bush probably didn’t consider sharing his knowledge
with the public, that Iran had no operating nuclear weapons program.
He did, however, slightly alter his tone, but never told the truth.
The Washington
Post’s
chronology of Bush’s Iranian fright lines shows the nuance in his
speech after the CIA informed him in August that Iran had shut its
nuke program.

Look
at the differences. On March 31 Bush stated definitively that “Iran
is trying to develop a nuclear weapon…” On August 6 he invented
an Iranian provocation: “this is a government [Iran] that has
proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon…” By August 9,
however, as Olberman notes, fine distinctions began to appear in his
alerts. Iranians “expressed their desire to be able to enrich
uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons
program…”

On
October 4, Bush became semi biblical: “you should not have the
know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon…”

Two
weeks later, on October 17, Bush issued yet another veiled threat,
without accusing Iran of actually trying to make a nuke. “Until
they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements
aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the
knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon.”

On
December 4, after the NIE report became public, Bush had to
reluctantly acknowledge the key fact he had absorbed in August. But
he nevertheless kept firing away. Indeed, with White House
encouragement, his
neo con acolytes like Frank Gaffney (Center for Security Policy) and
Norman Podhoretz (Commentary editor and Rudy Giuliani adviser)
compare
Iran and Nazi Germany – on talk shows. As if!

After
seven years in office, Bush has placed fear before victory. He saw
how throwing panic at the public — terrorists everywhere — could
serve his power. By seizing on the 9/11 tragedy and manipulating it
as a symbol to keep the public terrified, he garnered unequaled
presidential power and provoked world wide animosity — while
Congress and the public were
busy
being scared. The rest of the nation didn’t do so well.

Under
his and the malevolent Cheney’s guidance, the CIA used torture —
while denying it — extraordinary rendition (kidnapping) and other
invasions of the Bill of Rights and Magna Carta (no right to privacy
or habeas corpus). Periodically, Homeland Security reveals how it
foiled yet another terrorist plot. The latest of these alleged plots
evaporated. Seven barely literate Miami men who know nothing of
explosives or weapons were charged in June 2006 with conspiring to
blow up the Chicago’s Sears Tower. One defendant was acquitted; the
judge declared a mistrial for the six others.

Bush’s
detractors accuse him of having the IQ of a moron and the morality of
Henry Kissinger, but Bush has accomplished several missions: he has
destroyed Iraq, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and put the
people of this country into deep stress. The so-called intelligence
community (oxymoron?), beyond angry that their intelligence was
distorted in order to give Bush a pretext to invade Iraq, no doubt
predicted Bush would recoil at receiving the no nukes in Iran
finding, that he would discount it and use the braggadocio that has
flavored his sour administration to diminish its impact.

Ironically,
the intelligence experts have yet to actually show evidence that Iran
sought a nuclear weapons program. The NIE claimed Iran once had a
hidden weapons program. Bush averred. “What’s to say they
couldn’t start another nuclear weapons program?”

The
lap dog press has yet to even pose the question about the “fact”
of Iran’s supposedly hidden project. IAEA head Mohamed El Baradai
has never claimed he found evidence that the Teheran government
actually had begun such production. The powerful in government and
media “deduced” the logic that Iran was going beyond nuclear
energy reactors since Iraq was seeking a weapons program and Israel,
the most dangerous enemy in the region, had accumulated some 200
nukes.

Hey,
Libya and North Korea could also restart their programs — an old
fashioned axis of evil revival? Brazil, Argentina and South Africa
could refurbish their old nuclear dreams!

Evil
billionaires like Rupert Murdoch or T. Bone Pickens could start
private nuclear weapons operations — a real life James Bond movie!
How frustrating for Bush, wanting to fight — vicariously — and
getting a diplomatic victory that he refuses to acknowledge.

Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. His new book is A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
His new film, WE
DON’T PLAY GOLF HERE
is available on DVD from roundworldproductions@gmail.com.