- With the Democratic Party still hiding in the tall grass,
the GOP establishment is beginning to split over the issue of war on Iraq.
Majority Leader Dick Armey was the first to speak out against it, followed
by Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush I.
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- An attack on Iraq now, says Scowcroft, would "jeopardize,
if not destroy [our] global counter-terrorist campaign." It could
cause Saddam to launch weapons of mass destruction at Israel, provoking
Israeli nuclear retaliation, igniting Armageddon.
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- Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf concurs. In the Gulf War, Saddam's
first Scuds were aimed not at U.S. forces, but at Israel, to provoke Israel
to respond and shatter our Arab coalition. This time, Israel will be hit
by Scuds with weapons of mass destruction, says the general, and this time,
Israel will not hold its fire.
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- Far from fearing this scenario, Israel seems to welcome
it, as Ariel Sharon is now urging us to attack Iraq sooner, rather than
later, or not at all. Isolated and friendless in the Arab world, Sharon
would like to have America join Israel in the isolation booth. But what
is in Sharon's interest is not in America's interest.
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- With the U.S. establishment and military divided, and
our Arab and European allies opposed, President Bush may be having second
thoughts about a pre-emptive war. But can he back away from a war he has
loudly and repeatedly threatened?
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- Richard Perle thinks not. He thinks Bush's belligerency
has locked him in and he cannot now evade war without the ruination of
America's credibility. "[F]ailure to take on Saddam after what the
president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president
that it would set back the war on terrorism."
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- If Bush does not make good on all his bellicosity about
the "axis of evil" and "regime change," Perle is saying,
he risks a defeat in the war on terror and possible regime change in Washington,
D.C., in 2004.
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- Some of us have long argued that the president blundered
terribly with all this war talk, fed him by his neoconservative speechwriters.
It bought him nothing, but locked him into war before America or her allies
were united and prepared for it, and before he had fully considered all
of the consequences.
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- But Perle has a point. The president and America will
suffer a major loss of credibility in the Islamic world if he backs away
from war, and it is the president's own fault - and that of his War Cabinet
- that he, and we, are now far out on this limb.
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- They did not consider - or do not understand - the power
of words spoken by the leader of a superpower. Saddam can bluster about
"the mother of all battles" and American soldiers bringing their
coffins with them to Iraq. But when the president speaks, the world listens,
and when he threatens war in the aftermath of 9-11, the world concludes
that war is coming.
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- Now it will take great courage for the president to concede
he was rash in committing us to war, and more courage to back away from
war, for the rage and frustration he will engender in the War Party and
its unforgiving ally, the Israeli lobby, will be immense.
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- However, the War Party is losing momentum. Condoleeza
Rice's "moral case" for attacking Iraq fell flat. Whatever his
sins, Saddam is not in the same league with Stalin, whose regime FDR recognized
in 1933, as that monster was starving 9 million Ukrainians, or Mao, who
welcomed Nixon to Beijing, even as his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
was entering its bloody climax.
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- When Bush returns from Crawford, Texas, in September,
he is going to face a hellish situation. With Armey, Scowcroft and now
ex-Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger, Sen. Chuck Hagel and Jack Kemp
deserting the War Party, Democrats have all the political cover needed
to oppose the president's pre-emptive war.
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- They will be speaking up and speaking out, demanding
that he make his case to Congress and country, before going to war. The
War Party's moment may have come and gone.
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- The op-ed pages used to be monolithic for war. No more.
The talk shows now host Republicans against war. Polls are turning. Tony
Blair is no longer so hawkish. He faces a rebellion in his party and cabinet.
The U.N. is opposed, NATO is opposed, the Arabs are opposed. Sharon is
now openly pressing for war, and neoconservatives are branding opponents
"appeasers." Not a sign of strength.
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- If the president and War Cabinet are still committed
to pre-emptive war, they will have to make a far more compelling case to
the country and Congress. For they are losing the argument, even if they
retain the option of ending the argument - by simply launching the war.
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- Such is our situation, brought on by all this bellicose
rhetoric.
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- http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28677
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