© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
He had expected to say anything he wanted and escape without challenge.
But Fox News Channel's Tony Snow had a different idea. Snow thought it
might be interesting to stick to the facts for a change.
This Sunday past, Sen. Rockefeller took a play from the Terry McAuliffe
playbook and simply invented a convenient history. He told Snow and a
national television audience that President Bush has alarmed the nation with
a speech warning that an attack from Iraq was imminent.
Snow coolly played a tape of the president's State of the Union speech
where he in fact said exactly the opposite. Bush warned the Congress that
the United States could not wait for a threat to become imminent, to appear
suddenly and without warning.
Snow then read from a speech that Rockefeller himself had given, one in
which the West Virginia Democrat had proclaimed the threat from Iraq to be
imminent.
Sen. Rockefeller was exposed and embarrassed and babbled on incoherently
about what an average American should have inferred from the president's
speech. I think he was close to proclaiming psychic powers when the
interview - mercifully for him - ended.
Finally, a Democratic critic of the president had been obliged to
confront the facts. It doesn't happen too often. On the same day, Slow Joe
Biden was allowed by Tim Russert to repeatedly dodge the hard questions such
as why he had voted for the war in Iraq if it seemed like a bad idea to him
now. Few can filibuster like Joe, however, and Russert didn't corner him.
The Democrats need cornering right now, especially on the Kay Report. It
has become an intonation from the left that David Kay's catalog of horrors
represents a huge setback for the administration when in fact it is an
eye-opening and verdict-sealing litany of the many threats Saddam posed to
the world.
The infrastructure and production of banned weapons is documented, as is
the last minute rush to destroy the evidence and conceal the trail. The
factually-minded, however, have all the evidence they need.
- Saddam routinely and thoroughly violated the U.N. resolutions.
- He routinely pursued and likely possessed a wide array of the world's
deadliest weapons. His ambitions in this area were enormous.
- His regime would never have "evolved," and his brutal sons would have
been even more dangerous than the father.
- Of 130 massive weapons depots, we have searched 10.
Even the summary of the report goes on at length with details of this
sort.
Democrats and their allies in the media are attempting the biggest spin
since Clinton's declaration of chastity toward Ms. Lewinsky. They are saying
that David Kay has produced no proof of Saddam's threat. From that premise,
they launch into attacks on the war in Iraq, even when those attacks, like
Rockefeller's, depend on obvious lies.
It doesn't take much to expose this tactic and to demonstrate the agenda.
But it does take questioners willing to embarrass powerful Democrats, and
it does take a press corps willing to read the reports that brave men and
women have prepared.
The American voter will not be fooled by the double talk and posturing of
Democrats eager to return to power by any means. But it remains alarming
that elite media are so intent on assisting in their return that they will
ignore and distort even chapter and verse on the evils of Saddam's regime.
Recall that late in 2002, Saddam produced a detailed report for the U.N.
that purported to prove his compliance with all U.N. resolutions. Recall as
well how closely reported the production of that report was, and how many
thought the report combined with the return of inspectors to Iraq would
protect Iraq from invasion.
David Kay has now conclusively given the lie to all the theatrics of late
2002 and early 2003, to the ego of Blix and the maneuvers of the French.
There is overwhelming proof that all of the forces of appeasement then were
wrong.
It is startling and shameful that instead of trumpeting this evidence of
American justice and wisdom, Democrats are joining with European critics to
question the predicate for the war.
Even if this turned out to be shrewd politics, it would still be
reckless.
And it is likely to be the opposite of shrewd when Americans vote in 13
months.