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President's supporters should be disappointed with war's rationale

By Dave Haigler
December 28, 2003

Those of us who supported President George W. Bush in 2000 and in Afghanistan and even in Iraq should feel betrayed that the stated rationale for invading Iraq has proved groundless.

Afghanistan was one thing, because Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida were hiding there with the ruling Taliban’s blessing. Iraq is quite another thing. Bush’s grounds for invading Iraq were that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and had supported al-Qaida’s 9/11 attacks.

It’s clear now there were no weapons of mass destruction. Yes, Saddam gassed the Kurds more than a decade ago, but he was treating his enemies like that even when President Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld over to buddy up to Saddam back in the 1980s. Saddam’s weapons were never a WMD threat to us, and Bush should have known that.

The best proof Bush had of a Saddam connection to 9/11 was the alleged Prague meeting between hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmad al-Ani on April 8, 2001. At the time, Czech intelligence suspected al-Ani of planning to blow up the Prague office of Radio Free Europe and, after it surveiled the April 8 meeting, expelled him from the country on 48-hours’ notice. It thought the man who met with al-Ani on April 8 was hired to bomb RFE. That man was then only an unidentified Arab in his 20s living in Hamburg.

Only after 9/11 did Czech intelligence raise the suspicion that al-Ani’s suspected bomber might have been the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. This suspicion raised the possibility that Saddam might have had a hand in the 9/11 attack. So what we have here is a meeting, giving rise to a suspicion and an expulsion, leading to another suspicion and a possibility. By mid-May 2002, the alleged Atta/al-Ani meeting in Prague had been debunked by U.S. intelligence sources, but we went to war in Iraq on this basis anyway.

As Time magazine reported on July 30, "The administration placed such a strong emphasis on the purported Iraq/al-Qaida link when it appears to have been at odds with the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community." That puts it mildly. Other reported speculations for Atta’s alleged presence in Prague in April 2001 — besides interviewing for the proposed RFE bombing — include getting a cheaper airfare to Newark from there and the allegation that al-Ani met regularly with a friend, a used car dealer, who closely resembles Atta.

Besides the shock and incredulity that U.S. foreign policy and war plans could be based on such quicksand foundations, there is the issue of the historic hostility between the al-Qaida religious zealots and Saddam’s secular branch within Sunni Islam. Osama has long identified more with the oppressed Shiites in Iraq than the privileged Sunnis. One might hope that such historic hatred could be used to the West’s advantage. But we have a president who does not read newspapers. And when what his advisers tell him turns out wrong — as was the case with the WMD hype — all he can say is that it was credible at the time.

But how can he even determine what is credible if he hears only what his advisers want him to hear?

No, instead of capitalizing on the cultural and religious differences in the Middle East, Bush has confirmed Arab suspicions that Bush policy is anti-Arab or anti-Islam and confirmed the Democratic 2000 campaign theme of Bush as the hot-headed cowboy. Bush’s foreign policy has received good press abroad for little more than charming the Queen of England, who — last I heard — doesn’t vote either here or there.

Instead, we have a choice in the person of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who saw through these problems even when we former Bush supporters did not. Dean stands out from the rest of the Democratic pack, who mostly rode the crest of credulity the Bushies put forth that somehow, somewhere, there must be a connection between al-Qaida and Saddam.

Of course, Bush supporters try to paint Dean as unpatriotic, but that old dog won’t hunt any more than the April 2001 Prague meeting did. One can oppose an unwise war and still support our troops who should not have been put in harm’s way, and that is Dean’s position.

Not only that, but we get refreshing candor from Dean, even when it’s not politically correct, as when he spoke of Southern rednecks with rifles and Confederate flags in their pickups. Dean spoke the truth then — the Democratic Party needs those good ole boys back from the Republicans. His opposition reacted in typical politically correct fashion, suggesting strangely that it’s racist to talk about rednecks. But why can Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson talk about race, and a white Northern governor cannot? Strange indeed.

It would be nice to have a president who reads and understands and speaks the truth even when it’s not politically correct. Howard Dean will be that kind of president.

Dave Haigler is an Abilene attorney who serves as a mediator and an arbitrator for the National Association of Better Business Bureaus and the National Association of Securities Dealers.

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