BDS Pandemic; Dems, Liberals and Progressives Hardest Hit! UPDATED

EJ Dionne (long infected with BDS - Bush Derangement Syndrome) has had a hissy fit. He recently decided that he didn't like the way that Bush put the onus on the dems for the way they are touting the "Bush Lied" meme, in fact, I doubt if anyone else likes "... to be told their arguments make the troops' job harder. Who would want to hear they're undermining the war effort?" as Jonah Goldberg put it in National Review Online's "The Corner" Dionne writes:

Bush was not subtle. He said that anyone accusing his administration of having "manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people" was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," Bush declared last week. "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."

Bush was not subtle? OMG... EJ, where have you been for the last 2 and a half years. The Dems, including the vast majority of Dems in the Senate who signed onto the war, have been anything BUT subtle in their condemnation of Bush and the War. And, whether you like it or not, when they turn around and accuse Bush of everything but shorting the sheets of new recruits, they ARE undermining the morale of the troops, the vast majority of whom know EXACTLY why they are in Iraq and who re-up (reinlist) in record numbers. They ARE giving aid and comfort to the islamofascists who believe that if they hang on long enough, the US will belly up.

Well, guess what EJ, you have been called on your chicanery. The "Bush Lied" meme has been repeated so often, so loudly by so many that even the gullible people are beginning to doubt the goals and prospects of our efforts in Iraq. Just as they did in Vietnam. So, that part of the so called quagmire is true, the people are being lied to, consistently and persistently by the MSM and by folks like you. The master propagandist Josef Goebbels was right, tell any lie loud enough and often enough and people will begin to believe the lie.

And guess what? It is unpatriotic! You ought to be ashamed for writing such crap.

You can find more at Argghhh!, and at Hugh Hewitt and as Hewitt notes, even the republicans are getting in on the act.

UPDATE: Right Track has a good list of the Dems that Lied (well, if Bush did, so did these Dems)

“One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.�
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.�
President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

“Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.�
Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.�
Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb 18,1998

“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the US Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.�
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry (D - MA), and others Oct. 9,1998

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.�
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

“Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies.�
Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

“There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.�
Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001

“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.�
Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.�
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

“Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.�
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.�
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons…�
Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

“I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.�
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9,2002

“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.�
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

“He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do.�
Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct 10, 2002

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.�
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

“We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.�
Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002

“Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime… He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation… And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.�
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

Don't Go Into the Light is reporting a Moonbat Meeting in response to Bush's "Push Back" speech!

Myopic Zeal has another fine entry exposing the Dems for the charlatans they are.

Michele Malkin has more. Money graf:

They were emboldened when they were successful in getting the President to say the "16 words" should not have been included in the SOTU speech. This was the beginning of the "Bush lied" mantra. Many even claimed that Bush admitted he lied about the 16 words when he said they should not have been included. More on that sequence of events here and here. [be sure and click on all the links... ed]

Lori Byrd of PoliPundit in one of the two links noted in Michele Malkin's paragraph above links to Mark Steyn in a blistering attack on the attackers

Click on this graphic:



(graphic courtesy of Michele Malkin)

And lastly, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens ties it all together with this pair of bon mots:

What do you have to believe in order to keep alive your conviction that the Bush administration conspired to launch a lie-based war? As with (I admit) the pro-war case, the ground of argument has a tendency to shift. I saw two examples in Washington last week. An exceptionally moth-eaten and shabby picket line outside Ahmad Chalabi's event on Wednesday featured a man with a placard alleging that Bush had prearranged the 9/11 attacks. I know a number of left and right anti-warriors who have flirted with this possibility but very few who truly believe it. (Even Gore Vidal, who did at one point insinuate the idea, has recently withdrawn it, if only on the grounds of the administration's incompetence.)

And:

A few little strokes of Occam's razor are enough to dispose of this whole accumulation of fantasy. Suppose that every single Iraqi defector or informant, funneled out of a closed and terrified society by the INC, had been a dedicated and conscious fabricator. How could they persuade a vast organization, equipped with satellite surveillance that can almost read a license plate from orbit, of a plain untruth? (Leave to one side the useful intelligence that was provided by the INC and that has been acknowledged.) Well, what was the likelihood that ambiguous moves made by Saddam's agents were also innocuous moves? After decades in which the Baathists had been caught cheating and concealing, what room was there for the presumption of innocence? Hans Blix, the see-no-evil expert who had managed to certify Iraq and North Korea as kosher in his time, has said in print that he fully expected a coalition intervention to uncover hidden weaponry.

And this, of course, it actually has done. We did not know and could not know, until after the invasion, of Saddam's plan to buy long-range missiles off the shelf from Pyongyang, or of the centrifuge components buried on the property of his chief scientist, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi. The Duelfer report disclosed large latent facilities that were only waiting for the collapse of sanctions to resume activity. Ah, but that's not what you said you were looking for. … Could pedantry be pushed any further?

We can now certify Iraq as disarmed, even if the materials once declared by the Saddam regime and never accounted for have still not been found. Why does this certified disarmament upset people so much? Would they rather have given Saddam the benefit of the doubt? Much more infuriating about the current anti-Chalabi hysteria is this: He turns up in Washington with a large delegation of Iraqi democrats, including a female Shiite ex-Communist, several Sunni dignitaries from the "hot" provinces, and the legendary Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi, who led a genuine insurgency among the Marsh Arabs for 18 years. And the American left mounts a gargoyle picket line outside and asks silly and insulting questions inside, about a question that has already been decided. What a travesty this is. Not only do the liberal Democrats apparently want their own congressional votes from 1998 and 2002 back. It sometimes seems that they are actually nostalgic for the same period, when Saddam Hussein was running Iraq, and there were no coalition soldiers to challenge his rule, and when therefore by definition there was peace, and thus things were more or less OK. Their current claim to have been fooled or deceived makes them out, on their own account, to be highly dumb and gullible. But as dumb and gullible as that?

Linked at TMH Baconbits

Posted by GM Roper at November 15, 2005 09:11 PM | TrackBack