Senator Kennedy is as righteously, eloquently angry as only a handful of American political figures can pull off with any authenticity in these days of tepid, weather-vane leadership. Whether you agree with "Teddy" or not, whether you admire him or detest him as so many on the right do, you cannot deny that he can rattle the rafters when he has a mind to. I am sure it will not surprise any of you that I count myself among his admirers--I worked briefly on one of his abbreviated presidential forays so long ago that neither of us had any grey hair, at least that I knew about.
He can make this speech with even more authority since he did not vote for the war authorization in the senate. Whoa. You say. Because again it is no surprise that I have long been in favor of bringing down Saddam Hussein--that in fact I believe it was more than a decade too late in coming (how many Iraqi citizens would still be among the living if Bush the First had made the right choice instead of the cynically geopolitical one?). So why am I applauding a rousing speech Ted Kennedy made denouncing Bush on the war? Because Bush lied to everyone, perhaps even himself, because he did not trust American citizens to do the right thing when they are given the facts. The man preaches democracy, yet does not practice the most essential element for it to work as it should: an informed citizenry.
In a speech to the liberal Center for American Progress, Kennedy said the war has increased hatred for the United States abroad, diverted attention from the broader war against terrorism and put the country more "at risk" than it was before.
Kennedy, a leading Democratic liberal who was among the small minority of lawmakers to vote against the congressional authorization for war in 2002, has been criticizing Bush on Iraq for months, but rarely in such a sweeping fashion. He accused the administration of distorting intelligence and pursuing an ideological agenda in building the case for war.
"No president of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war," he said. "In doing so, the president broke the basic bond of trust between the government and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war."
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) denounced the speech, calling it a "hateful attack against the commander in chief." He said Kennedy "insulted the president's patriotism, accused the Republican Party of treason, and resurrected the weak and indecisive foreign policy of Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis."
Kennedy referred approvingly to an assertion by former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill in a new book that Bush began planning for war against Iraq shortly after taking office in 2001. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has denied the assertion, but Kennedy indicated he believes it, praising O'Neill's "integrity, intelligence and vision" and saying the book has "now revealed what many of us have long suspected."
Kennedy said "the steamroller of war was moving into high gear" by fall of 2002. "The administration insisted that Congress vote to authorize the war before it adjourned for the November elections. Why? Because the debate in Congress would distract attention from the troubled economy and the troubled effort to capture [al Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden. The strategy was to focus on Iraq and do so in a way that would divide the Congress. And it worked."
Now, Kennedy said, "there is little doubt as well that the administration's plan to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people by this summer -- and the pressure to hold elections in Afghanistan at that time -- are intended to build momentum for the November elections in this country." The war, he said, "could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."
