Soccer Dad

Thoughts on the Bush administration and its Critics

1) When I heard the report that the toxin ricin had been found in the office of Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist, I wondered when administration's critics would start suggesting that the administration had planted the poison itself. After all candidate Sen. John Kerry had just said that he thought that the threat of terrorism was exaggerated:

"I think there has been an exaggeration," Mr. Kerry said when asked whether President Bush has overstated the threat of terrorism. "They are misleading all Americans in a profound way."

No doubt there will be those that will say that the Bush team planted the ricin to show that the threat of terror was real. Bill Hobbs thought the same way.
It could certainly be argued that I'm being too cynical about the president's (and the Republicans') political rivals, but as James Taranto pointed out on Tuesday that the charge has been made before:

"What the profile doesn't tell, but what is equally apparent to me, is that this guy is some kind of right-wing wacko. How else do you explain his decision to send one anthrax-laden letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and what is now believed to be a second anthrax-laced missive to Sen. Patrick Leahy--two Democrats in a Senate that Democrats control by a one-vote majority. The other letters were sent to media companies, another favorite target of the radical right. None of the pathogen was mailed to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott or to Rep. Tom DeLay and Rep. Dick Armey, the leading House right-wingers."--DeWayne Wickham, USA Today, Nov. 20, 2001

Heck, another reason the president's proxies planted the poison was to get back Sen. Jeffords for bolting the Republican party. Jeffords's staffers were among those possibly contaminated by the ricin. I don't believe this stuff, but I'm sure there are those who do.
2) Remember the issue the Democrats made that Saxby Chambliss had impugned the patriotism of his opponent, then-Sen. Max Cleland. I didn't see the commercials referenced but I'm not convinced that Chambliss stepped over any lines. (Here and here are two sides of the issue.) Still one would expect that if Cleland was so concerned about others misrepresenting his record, he would be more circumspect:

When I asked Kerry why the Republicans wouldn't do to him what they had done to Cleland, he said that Cleland failed to fight back against attack ads, a mistake he wouldn't make. Cleland himself has learned his lesson and is now going pre-emptive on behalf of Kerry. While he challenged Michael Moore's claim that Bush was a "deserter" during Vietnam, Cleland did argue to me that "Bush was AWOL and was kicked out of the Alabama National Guard" when he worked on a Senate campaign instead of fulfilling the second year of his guard duties.

And it appears that Alter is being too timid in claiming that Bush's service record is "inconclusive." Bill Hobbs (again) has more.
3) Finally, last week arms inspector David Kay issued his long awaited report on the status of WMD in Iraq. Dr. Kay concluded that there were no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq as intelligence had suggested. That led to plenty of the administration's critics suggesting that the president lied to the American people in order to make his course for war. They did this, of course, despite Dr. Kay's emphatic claim that the president was, himself, misled.
Why did the Bush team put up with this? Why didn't it research Dr. Kay's past and find out some tiny skeleton he had in his closet? After all Dr. Kay's testimony was a much bigger blow to the administration's credibility than Amb. Joseph Wilson's claim that he found no evidence of Iraqi efforts to obtain yellowcake in Niger.
The administration's critics were all too willing to charge that the "outing" of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was an effort to intimidate Wilson. (That was indeed what Wilson had charged. But why intimidate him after he spilled the beans?) But what is their proof? Wilson was small potatoes compared to Kay, and if the administration needed to discredit anyone it was Kay not Wilson. I never bought the charge about Plame-Wilson. The fact that the we didn't find out anything embarrassing about Dr. Kay merely emphasizes the point that there was no intent by the administration to bully Wilson. It was Wilson who probably did more to publicize his wife's identity than anyone in the administration.

Posted by SoccerDad at February 5, 2004 1:33 PM