The Phalanx has long complained that the President has allowed his political detractors to set the mood in Washington and among the American people. The constant barrage of negative criticism at the hands of the president’s leftist criticism have come to be accepted as fact. Any demagogue or propagandist can tell you that if a charge is repeated often enough it will be accepted as fact, especially in the absence of a vigorous counter. This is chapter one in the art of pulling a Mussolini. In 4 years president, Bush has consistently failed to respond to his critics, even during the 2004 presidential campaign, his responses were tepid at best. When the left claimed that the economy was in the toilet, Bush did nothing. Sure he refuted the charge, but not nearly often enough and certainly not loud enough and rarely did he use the considerable amount of evidence available to him to support his claim, thus giving the impression that his critics are accurate.

On Iraq, Bush has allowed the left to set the agenda again, first with the causes for the war and now with the progress of the war itself. The president was so committed to conveying his message in the run up to the Iraq war and now seems content to sit back and do nothing as the left revises history. Now it seems the president has gotten the message, in the coming days reports indicate Bush will use the words of his detractors against him. Bush will quote president Clinton and leading Democrats in the House and Senate who warned against Saddam Hussein and the impending use of WMDs. The fact of the matter is Clinton, up until the moment he left office in 2001 and other leading Democrats well into 2003 and even 2004 argued that Saddam was a significant threat with devastating weapons. Only when election season drew near did the Democratic opposition begin to change its tune and only then did the left loose their collective memories.

Indeed, Iraq possessed such weapons, they admitted as much after the Gulf War and never produced a single shred of evidence indicating they had destroyed these weapons as Iraq was required to do. If Iraq had no such weapons then whose weapons did they use on several occasions prior to the Gulf War and why admit to possessing something they didn’t have which would require UN inspections of secure government sites and why produce no evidence of their destruction over a period of 12 years if this was indeed the claim?

The left has also disputed Iraq’s links to terrorism. This in spite of the fact that Saddam regularly paid the families of suicide bombers, harbored some of the world’s leading terrorists and Iraq’s intelligence forces met on more than one occasion with the Sept 11th hijackers, facts which are supported by the 9/11 commission report. Given these incontrovertible facts, how then are the Democrats able to make such traction with their clearly imagined and false statements? Because Bush does nothing, offers no retorts, produces no contradictory evidence, indeed, Bush’s replies have been tepid and dish watery at best. Its no surprise a majority of the public have come to doubt his sincerity. We know the facts and even we have to doubt when the president stands by like a dear caught in the headlights.

Now the president has adopted a new strategy, given that he has allowed so much time to pass and done so little to salvage his reputation, it may be too late. Perhaps the president is of the opinion that a noble cause doesn’t require a dignified response to obvious lies and slander. In a perfect world perhaps he would be right. But in a perfect world, politics wouldn’t eclipse national security in the minds of our political leaders. In a perfect world the opposition wouldn’t try to undermine a president even at the expense of the country. The president must be mindful of the fact that if he looses the support of the people he cannot govern and in the end what good are noble intentions without measurable results?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/14/iraq.intelligence/
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/13/131646.shtml