Stand behind our troops, but don’t hide behind them

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, November 15, 2005

“The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America’s will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them.”

President Bush, speaking on Veterans Day

There’s a difference between standing behind our troops and hiding behind our troops.

This president would be so much happier if we’d just keep allowing him to blur the two. We don’t seem inclined to do that, though – not this time, not any more – which is why this president isn’t very happy at all lately. He sounds frustrated. He sounds angry. He sounds the way someone sounds who’s never had to take responsibility for his own mistakes, and who suddenly discovers that this time, there’s nobody rushing in to bail him out, and nobody else he can blame for his predicament.

Which certainly hasn’t kept him from trying.

Still, it says something about the predicament – about the man and his predicament – that even in defending himself against the charge that he shaded the truth in the run-up to the war in Iraq, he’s gone right ahead and shaded the truth yet again.

“Some Democrats and anti-war critics,” he announced just the other day, “are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs.”

Which would be a perfectly reasonable defense, if only the “bipartisan Senate investigation” had actually looked for the evidence – for all the evidence. True, investigators in the Senate and elsewhere found nothing to prove that the administration had pressured the CIA to “change” its evaluation of Saddam Hussein’s intentions and capabilities.

But they never examined what the administration did and didn’t do with the information: which frightening tidbits were shouted from the rooftops as if they were the whole story, and which doubts and dissents and caveats were stuffed into a desk drawer somewhere.

The head of the president’s own commission on weapons of mass destruction admitted as much; his panel hadn’t been authorized to look into how information might have been used, or misused. Surely the president knows that. Surely he’s “fully aware” that the whole question of how his administration used the intelligence was taken off the table by Congress until after the 2004 election. And surely even this man who says he doesn’t read newspapers knows that, a full year later, the relevant Senate committee still hasn’t quite gotten around to digging into the matter.

Surely the president knows all this, knows the truth – and yet he chooses to distort it.

Lest you think it’s a one-time slip, this Bush bait-and-switch, cast your eyes on the White House’s own Web site, and the area called “Setting the Record Straight.” (Who says these people don’t have a sense of humor?) Here’s the White House trying to knock down a charge from Sen. Carl Levin that the president deceived the American people by suggesting over and over again a link between Saddam Hussein and the murderous attacks of 9/11.

“But,” screams the White House, in bold-face type and Capital Letters, “Sen. Levin And Other Democrats Previously Said That Iraq Was A Part Of The War On Terror.” Followed by a selection of quotes from Sen. Levin (and Sen. Clinton, and Sen. Kerry) attesting to the utter rottenness of Saddam Hussein.

But Levin hadn’t said Saddam wasn’t a bad guy, or a destabilizing force in the Middle East. He’d said that the president’s constant suggestion that Saddam was linked to 9/11 was wrong. Knowingly wrong. A deception. So “Setting the Record Straight”? More like another bait-and-switch.

Call it a pattern.

“These baseless attacks,” the president declares, “send the wrong signal to our troops … “

It’s nice that the president is so concerned about sending wrong signals to our troops. Here’s how to send wrong signals to our troops: Send them into battle without adequate body armor, or adequate armor for their vehicles. Send them in without a plan – without a clue – for restoring vital services after the fighting stops. Send them in in numbers insufficient to complete the job, to restore and maintain security throughout Iraq. Send them in with theories, and ignore the awful reality on the ground. And then, when people criticize you and the way you’ve managed your war, say that they’re harming those soldiers and sailors and Marines.

There’s a big difference between standing behind our troops and hiding behind our troops.

People are noticing. No wonder the president looks so unhappy.

Rick Horowitz is a nationally syndicated columnist. Contact him by writing to rickhoro@execpc.com.