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by Mike Harris - 11/20/05 Last Friday, President Bush gave a speech to military personnel at Tobyhanna Army Depot in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania. During his speech, he chastised democratic leaders who are now asking for answers on why false intelligence was reported in the media and to the American public. In the speech he said “The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will.” Wasn't this the same president who claimed in a State of the Union address to the American public, “Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa?” Didn't he state this after receiving three separate reports explicitly stating the Niger allegations were false? It was his words that convinced 70% of the American public that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9-11 attacks. It was this administration that claimed Mohammad Atta met with a senior Iraq officer four months before 9-11. In hindsight, we now know these instances were little more then rumors and innuendos. Unfortunately for the President, these charges are not false or baseless. The intelligence he relayed to the American public was sold as solid intel, and we bought it. The democrats want answers as to not only how, but also why information like this was given to both Congress and the American public and passed off as credible. They want to know why a better effort for truth was not sought. They want to know why they were fed a litany of misleading facts and propaganda meant to scare the American public. Saying previous administrations thought the same thing is not an excuse, for they did not invade based on the flimsy intelligence we had. The democrats are not unaccountable for their actions either. They were more concerned in 2002 about the upcoming election then searching for the truth. It is only now, after public sentiment on Iraq has changed, that they go on the offensive and start to ask questions, something they should have been doing in 2002, not 2005. The fight they are putting up now should have been going on in the fall of 2002 during the buildup to war. This does not mean the questions should not be answered and a possible manipulation of intelligence for political purposes should not be investigated. No, it simply means that they are as responsible as the republicans for not giving a voice of dissent and demanding proof, not conjecture. It means that either side of the political spectrum should not sit idly by and go to war without asking tough questions. Making the decision to go to war is one of the greatest responsibilities we give our president. As Americans our only desire is that all of the facts are considered when making a decision such as this. We never want to rush into war on false pretexts, as I believe we did in Iraq. We want our elected officials to examine all available options to avoid war, because every life is precious, especially our soldiers on the front line. That does not mean that war is not necessary, sometimes it is, just not in the case of Iraq, and not in the pretext President Bush gave to the American public. I will leave with this quote, from a prominent republican. Robert Alphonse Taft, son of President Taft and Senator from Ohio from the 30’s to the 50’s. He was a prominent spokesman for the Republican Party during the FDR era and was dubbed “Mr. Republican” by his peers. "As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur." This quote was given on December 19th 1941, twelve days after Pearl Harbor. It is a shame our current brand of politicians have managed to forget history, but then again I’m not surprised. Mike Harris works as a mechanical engineer for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics designing telescopes for space borne satellites. He can be reached at the following e-mail address: mharris@cfa.harvard.edu
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