Friday, July 18, 2003 | 10:16 a.m.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
THE PRESIDENT says it is time to move on.
To that I would say, "Which way?"
In an effort to put an end to that embarrassing little episode of those 16 words in the State of the Union speech, Ari Fleischer, as one of his last efforts before he moved on from his post as presidential spokesman, said that "the president has moved on. And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on as well."
Those 16 words, of course, had a whole lot to do with pinning the immediacy of an Iraqi nuclear weapons attack on solid intelligence information that had Saddam Hussein attempting to obtain radioactive material from the African country of Niger. President George W. Bush apparently liked what he heard so much that he repeated it in his State of the Union speech, a move designed to help America's enrollment into the bomb-Saddam-before-he-bombs-us club.
As a matter of full disclosure, I have always been a member of the Bomb Saddam Club, but I have to admit that there are others on the list, too. I also have to admit that his having or not having a nuclear weapons program has little or nothing to do with my reasons for wanting him and a goodly number of other terrorist-sponsoring dictators "term limited" by whatever means necessary.
Now that we have the formalities out of the way, let's get back to that speech President Bush made and the mess that really isn't over, as much as President Bush, Karl Rove and the rest of the White House would wish it so.
One reason the story won't go away, other than the fact that Congress is just starting to investigate the hows and whys of the whole thing, is that what the president told the world was not true. At least, nobody to this point will say anything other than that it is false.
Another reason is that Americans don't like going to war, killing people and having our own young people killed on the basis of erroneous information. We want to know what happened, what went wrong and why.
I am not saying President Bush lied to the American people. What I am saying is that he told us something that nobody will say is the truth and which almost everyone else has disavowed, some even before the Niger information made it into the State of the Union.
No one wants to get caught calling the president a liar, not even me. It is bad form, especially while he is enjoying such high popularity numbers and, most especially, while he is busy protecting us from the likes of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. He told us he would bring those bums to justice and he did. Didn't he?
But we must also not ignore reality. Nevadans have a bit of experience with Mr. Bush and his administration and his difficulties with the truth. We remember when he told us that Yucca Mountain wouldn't happen until the science was in. Now he is doing everything in his power -- through third parties, of course -- to shove Yucca Mountain down our throats as fast as he can. And the science still isn't in.
As much as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of that crew have told us that "words matter," they keep ignoring their own advice. Their words don't seem to matter to them as long as they obtain the ends that they seek. When I was a small child, I learned that the ends do not justify the means. Show me a kid today who is learning that lesson. So forgive us our cynical view of our president's intentions when he tells us it was a mistake, that he didn't mean to mislead us, our allies and the rest of the world with those 16 little words. I wonder how many words were in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution?
What is more disturbing, though, beyond the president's apparent white lie, is the partisanship that seems to be surrounding the investigation into the process that elevated that falsehood into State of the Union material.
I would think every American, regardless of political affiliation, would want to know the truth and that politics would be as far from that pursuit as possible. And, yet, it seems that those who wish to find out what happened are Democrats and those who want to move on by trumping the action with the "patriot" card are Republicans.
Some things about America should not be seen through the eyes of a particular political ideology. I would think that the case made by the President for going to war -- for sending our young people into harm's way and for imposing body bags on a grateful nation -- would be one of those things.
If we learned nothing else from the Viet Nam War, we learned that much.
So, Mr. President, before we "move on," do you mind if we determine which direction you are leading us and the means by which you would like us to go?
And, frankly, if we really want to go there with you.
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