An excerpt from 'Hubris,' the new Isikoff and Corn book about how the Bush administration sold the Iraq war to its supporters.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14740070/site/newsweek/
Excerpts from the excerpt for your reading pleasure.( Follow link above for full story).
"As the White House pressed its case for war against Iraq in the fall of 2002, one senior GOP lawmaker agonized about what to do. In this exclusive excerpt from 'Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,' a new book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, is the previously untold story of how Dick Armey, who was then House majority leader and a silent skeptic about Iraq, succumbed to Vice President Dick Cheney’s pressure—much to Armey’s later regret.
It was the morning of September 4, 2002, and George W. Bush had summoned eighteen senior members of the House and Senate to the Cabinet Room of the White House. When the lawmakers took their seats at the imposing oval mahogany table, they were given copies of a letter from the president. "America and the civilized world face a critical decision in the months ahead," it began. "The decision is how to disarm an outlaw regime that continues to possess and develop weapons of mass destruction." Bush told the assembled leaders he needed a quick vote in Congress on a resolution that would grant him the authority to take on Saddam—perhaps with military action. He wanted this vote within six weeks—before Congress left town so members could campaign for reelection. It was the start of an extraordinary public relations campaign by the White House to persuade the American people—and the world—that Saddam was such a pressing threat that war might be the only option.
Listening to the president, Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle felt trapped. House and Senate members were gearing up for the final stretch of the campaign—with control of the Senate up for grabs. Bush was informing them that the national debate would now focus on Iraq, not health care, not tax cuts, not the environment or anything the Democrats wanted to talk about. Daschle pressed Bush on why there was a need to move quickly. Sure, Saddam was a problem that had to be addressed. But what was new? How immediate was the threat? Where was the tangible evidence?
As he did so, Daschle was thinking of one man: Karl Rove. The previous January, Rove, Bush's master strategist, had telegraphed his intention to use terrorism and national security issues to hammer Democrats in the fall campaign. “We can go to the country on this issue,” Rove had proclaimed at a Republican gathering, because the American people "trust the Republican Party to do a better job of strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America.” Daschle wondered whether Bush was cynically pushing the Iraq threat as a campaign gambit.
The day before, Daschle had attended a breakfast with Bush in the president's private dining room with Cheney, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Senate minority leader Trent Lott, and House minority leader Dick Gephardt. And he had put the same questions to the president. Wouldn’t it be better, he asked, to postpone this until after the election and take politics out of the question? Bush had looked at Cheney who shot the president what Daschle would describe as a “half-smile.” Then Bush turned back to Daschle and said, “We just have to do it now.” That was it, Daschle would later recall: “He didn’t answer the question.” But Bush’s sidelong glance to Cheney told Daschle that the two of them had thought this through. Now in the Cabinet Room, within a larger group of legislators, Daschle received no more satisfying a reply, as Bush insisted that the House and Senate proceed quickly. "The issue isn't going away," Bush told the congressional leaders. "You can't let it linger.""
"On the afternoon of September 26, 2002, Bush was at a Houston fundraiser for Republican senatorial candidate John Cornyn. Surrounded by old friends from Texas, he made his most bellicose public comments about Saddam yet. There would be “no discussion, no debate, no negotiation” with the Iraqi dictator. He repeated the standard litany: Saddam had tortured his own citizens, gassed the Kurds, invaded his neighbors: "There’s no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us. There’s no doubt he can’t stand us.” But it was one particular line in this speech that would grab worldwide attention: “After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time.”
Bush was referring to a plot by a group of Iraqis and Kuwaitis who had been arrested walking in the Kuwaiti dessert one night in April 1993. They were later charged by the Kuwaiti government with conspiring to assassinate George H.W. Bush with a car bomb during a ceremonial visit the former president and his family had made to Kuwait that month.
The fact that Bush was pointing to the incident nine years later to explain his current policy made some members of Congress uncomfortable. Armey later said he “just cringed” when he read about the president’s comment. “Wow,” he remarked to his wife, “I hope that’s not what this is all about."
"Trust me on this, Dick," Vice President Dick Cheney told House Majority Leader Dick Armey. “When I get done with this briefing, you’re going to be with me.”
It was an afternoon late in September, and Armey had been invited over to the vice president’s small hideaway office in the U.S. Capitol. This was the briefing Bush had promised Armey three weeks earlier. Ever since then, Armey had bowed to the president’s wishes and not said anything in public about his doubts about the Bush's stand. But the White House understood Armey’s importance. He was the number two Republican in the House. If he broke ranks, that would be a problem. So Cheney was dispatched to do the job himself.
Armey thought Cheney’s opening remark was odd: "He didn't say you're going to be with us. He didn't say you're going to be with the president. He said you're going to be with me.""
-------------------- “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.” -- Rudiger Dornbusch
Edited by zorbman (10/16/06 11:39 PM)
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Over the next half hour, Cheney, surrounded by aides, pointed to pictures of the aluminum tubes, showed overhead images of nuclear sites supposedly under construction, displayed drawings of mobile biological labs and photographs of UAVs that could hit Israel and spread mass death. He talked about the "associations" and "relationships" between Saddam and al Qaeda. He noted that the Iraqis could slip miniaturized biological weapons (that fit in suitcases) to terrorists, who could bring them into the United States and kill thousands.
As Armey listened to Cheney and stared at the photos, it occurred to him that he couldn't really see anything in the pictures. They were aerial shots of buildings and other sites. Who knew what was in those buildings? Armey realized he had to rely on what Cheney was telling him. "It wasn't very convincing," Armey later recalled. “If I had gotten the same briefing from President Clinton or Al Gore, I probably would have said, 'Ah, bulls--t.' But you don't do that with your own people." He assumed Cheney was leveling him; it never occurred to Armey that the vice president was not telling him the whole story.
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