National House of Waffles By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON More and more, with Bush administration pronouncements about the Iraq war, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is. W. built his political identity on the idea that he was not Bill Clinton. He didn't parse words or prevaricate. He was the Texas straight shooter. So why is he now presiding over a completely Clintonian environment, turning the White House into a Waffle House, where truth is camouflaged by word games and responsibility is obscured by shell games? The president and Condi Rice can shuffle the shells and blame George Tenet, but it smells of mendacity. Mr. Clinton indulged in casuistry to hide personal weakness. The Bush team indulges in casuistry to perpetuate its image of political steel. Dissembling over peccadillos is pathetic. Dissembling over pre-emptive strikes is pathological, given over 200 Americans dead and 1,000 wounded in Iraq, and untold numbers of dead Iraqis. Our troops are in "a shooting gallery," as Teddy Kennedy put it, and our spy agencies warn that we are on the cusp of a new round of attacks by Saddam snipers. Why does it always come to this in Washington? The people who ascend to power on the promise of doing things differently end up making the same unforced errors their predecessors did. Out of office, the Bush crowd mocked the Clinton propensity for stonewalling; in office, they have stonewalled the 9/11 families on the events that preceded the attacks, and the American public on how — and why — they maneuvered the nation into the Iraqi war. Their defensive crouch and obsession with secrecy are positively Nixonian. (But instead of John Dean and an aggressive media, they have Howard Dean and a cowed media.) In a hole, the president should have done some plain speaking: "The information I gave you in the State of the Union about Iraq seeking nuclear material from Africa has been revealed to be false. I'm deeply angry and I'm going to get to the bottom of this." But of course he couldn't say that. He would be like Sheriff Bart in "Blazing Saddles," holding the gun to his own head and saying, "Nobody move or POTUS gets it." The Bush administration has known all along that the evidence of the imminent threat of Saddam's weapons and the Al Qaeda connections were pumped up. They were manning the air hose. Mr. Tenet, in his continuing effort to ingratiate himself to his bosses, agreed to take the fall, trying to minimize a year's worth of war-causing warping of intelligence as a slip of the keyboard. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," he said, in 15 words that were clearly written for him on behalf of the president. But it won't fly. It was Ms. Rice's responsibility to vet the intelligence facts in the president's speech and take note of the red alert the tentative Tenet was raising. Colin Powell did when he set up camp at the C.I.A. for a week before his U.N. speech, double-checking what he considered unsubstantiated charges that the Cheney chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and other hawks wanted to sluice into his talk. When the president attributed the information about Iraq trying to get Niger yellowcake to British intelligence, it was a Clintonian bit of flim-flam. Americans did not know what top Bush officials knew: that this "evidence" could not be attributed to American intelligence because the C.I.A. had already debunked it. Ms. Rice did not throw out the line, even though the C.I.A. had warned her office that it was sketchy. Clearly, a higher power wanted it in. And that had to be Dick Cheney's office. Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, said he was asked to go to Niger to answer some questions from the vice president's office about that episode and reported back that it was highly doubtful. But doubt is not the currency of the Bush hawks. Asked if he regretted using the Niger claim, Mr. Bush replied: "There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to world peace. And there's no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power. And there's no doubt in my mind, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth." I'm happy that Mr. Bush's mental landscape is so cloudless. But it is our doubts he needs to assuage.
Man, she put her finger right on the Clinton, I mean button! This administration waffles over everything. No matter the lies told or intelligence debunked, they keep shouting "but he was a ruthless dictator" like that gives anyone the right (by itself) to preemptively take a government out of power. Now, I was on board for this war when they were talking about biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. I really thought we were going to take a bunch of casualties as a result of chemical and biological weapons and thought that this was justification. I believed the administration had evidence of these programs, as I did when Bush I was in office. This is the entire basis for ME agreeing that this war was necessary, if a bit too convenient. My confidence in this administration has gone from tentative, after the election, to highly supportive, after September 11. I know that it was probably necessary to go kick Al Quaeda (sp?) out of Afghanistan and supported them on that as well. Since then, it has been nothing but waffling on issues overseas, which were about the only issues they had me on in the first place. Than add in the dividends to the rich folks, the murder of missionaries overseas, the crappy economy and unemployment rates (what is the statute of limitations for claiming that it is Clinton's fault?), the treatment of medical mar1juana providers in California, and the secrecy under which everything is being kept and I don't trust this administration to do ANYTHING that is in my best interest. They are too busy paying their donors and expanding the empire.
