Flashback Friday

This Flashback Friday is an obvious one. On January 28, 2003, President Bush delivered his infamous State of the Union address with this now-infamous lie:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

But this wasn't even the only lie of this speech. He also said:

Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.

Nope

But it's something else that is actually more revealing.

From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses.

Here's the report from Hans Blix the day before (January 27):

It has regard to the procedures, mechanisms, infrastructure and practical arrangements to pursue inspections and seek verifiable disarmament. While inspection is not built on the premise of confidence but may lead to confidence if it is successful, there must nevertheless be a measure of mutual confidence from the very beginning in running the operation of inspection.

Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field. The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt. We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good. The environment has been workable.

Blix did go on to identify areas where the Iraqi regime was being uncooperative (having nothing to do with what Bush mentioned above), but the sleight-of-hand worked. To this day, I still run into people who believe that Saddam either wasn't cooperating at all, or even kicked the inspectors out. The Bush administration is great at making sure it comes right to the edge of telling a lie without actually telling it, and this was a great example.

But beyond the lies and the poor logic, one thing really stands above the rest for me, both in how Bush sees the world, and in how little many of us understood the situation at the time.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

There were a great many times that the President was able to convince us that Saddam was just as dangerous as Al Qaeda, and therefore there was no time for delay. This position was wildly popular here, but completely misguided. The thing that we didn't understand was that the most dangerous enemy in the world is one with nothing to lose. That's what separates Al Qaeda from any tyrant. A tyrant, no matter how irrational or aggressive, knows that if they cross a certain line, they will end up being the target. The Iranians know this, even the nutjob in Pyongyang knows this.

Saddam began to cooperate with Blix and the inspectors because he knew he had been close to that line, and the world was debating whether or not he'd crossed it. Bush, of course, did whatever he could to cover up that fact, lest we find out that Saddam wasn't so irrational and difficult to contain after all. Having a President that zealous to start a war is bad enough, re-electing him was a disaster.