As planned, Bush traveled to Philadelphia today to deliver the third of four speeches on Iraq in advance of Iraq’s upcoming elections. Unlike every other presidential speech over the last several years, Bush opened the floor to questions after his address — and according to several news accounts, the questions were not scripted or asked exclusively by pre-screened sycophants.
To be sure, this is a pleasantly surprising development. Maybe it’s because of the Newsweek cover, or maybe it’s because Brian Williams is following Bush around today and they wanted to score some p.r. points, or maybe the Bush gang decided to just take a chance. Whatever the motivation, they’re to be congratulated — allowing the president to hear five questions from regular Americans may seem pretty routine for a president, but for these guys, it’s a quite a breakthrough.
Early on in the Q and A, Bush told the audience that he’d repeat their question so others could hear it. He added, “If I don’t like it, I’ll make it up.” The comment, according to the transcript, prompted laughter and applause. Let’s hope Bush was kidding.
As for the questions themselves, only one was pointed. A woman asked, “Mr. President, I would like to know why it is that you and others in your administration keep linking 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq when no respected journalist or Middle Eastern expert confirmed that such a link existed.” Here’s Bush response, in its entirety:
“I appreciate that. 9/11 changed my look on foreign policy. I mean, it said that oceans no longer protect us, that we can’t take threats for granted; that if we see a threat, we’ve got to deal with it. It doesn’t have to be militarily, necessarily, but we got to deal with it. We can’t — can’t just hope for the best anymore.
“And so the first decision I made, as you know, was to — was to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan because they were harboring terrorists. This is where the terrorists planned and plotted. And the second decision, — which was a very difficult decision for me, by the way, and it’s one that I — I didn’t take lightly — was that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He is a declared enemy of the United States; he had used weapons of mass destruction; the entire world thought he had weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations had declared in more than 10 — I can’t remember the exact number of resolutions — that disclose, or disarm, or face serious consequences. I mean, there was a serious international effort to say to Saddam Hussein, you’re a threat. And the 9/11 attacks extenuated that threat, as far as I — concerned.
“And so we gave Saddam Hussein the chance to disclose or disarm, and he refused. And I made a tough decision. And knowing what I know today, I’d make the decision again. Removing Saddam Hussein makes this world a better place and America a safer country.”
Needless to say, this didn’t answer the woman’s question about why the Bush gang linked 9/11 to Iraq. But the president’s response did raise a different question.
Most of this was boilerplate rhetoric, but I wonder what, exactly, Bush means when he says “we gave Saddam Hussein the chance to disclose or disarm, and he refused.” He did? I know 2003 was a while ago, but as I recall, Hussein let weapons inspectors into Iraq. He couldn’t very well “disarm,” in large part because he didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction.
Bush does realize that Hussein couldn’t disclose and disarm stockpiles that didn’t actually exist, right? And if the president does realize this, where was he going with these comments?