As Final Iraq Survey Group Report Undercuts White House Again, Bush Continues To Lose Grip

by Steve

"I think the report will clearly show that Saddam Hussein was a threat we needed to take seriously, and he was in clear defiance of the international community and Resolution 1441," Mr. McClellan said, referring to a prewar United Nations measure trying to get Mr. Hussein to obey the international body's orders. "I think it will show that he retained the intent and capability to produce weapons of mass destruction."
--Scott McClellan, today

Yeah, but “intent” doesn’t equate with an “imminent” or "gathering threat," and "take seriously" doesn’t equate with invasion and occupation, does it Scotty?

Yesterday, the Bush Administration dealt with a body blow from their own Iraqi procounsul Paul Bremer, who said that the occupation was hampered by an inadequate number of troops on the ground. Today, the Administration must deal with the final report of the Iraq Survey Group, also led by handpicked Bush accomplices; first David Kay, and now Charles Duelfer. The final report’s verdict?

The government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The officials said that the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. President Bush has continued to assert in his campaign stump speech that Iraq had posed "a gathering threat."

The officials said Duelfer, an experienced former United Nations weapons inspector, found that the state of Hussein's weapons-development programs and knowledge base was less advanced in 2003, when the war began, than it was in 1998, when international inspectors left Iraq.

"They have not found anything yet," said one U.S. official who had been briefed on the report.

Duelfer's findings follow reports by the Senate intelligence committee and his predecessor, David A. Kay, that criticized the prewar assessment that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Bush has pointed to the Duelfer report as the last word on the state of Iraq's weapons programs. Asked in June if he thought such weapons had existed in Iraq, Bush said he would "wait until Charlie gets back with the final report."

Well, George, “Charlie” just punched you in the eye. And while we wasted our time and the lives of thousands in a misguided war in Iraq and are squandering reconstruction money away from the Iraqi people to provide security from those we “liberated”, Iran has developed a missile program to go along with the nuclear program necessary to really be an imminent threat to their neighbors and us. And Afghanistan has returned to drug production and is now making a habit of trying to assassinate its American-installed leaders.

And to top it off, apparently the Bush Administration has now backed away from supporting a Palestinian state and its own Road Map, breaking commitments that Bush had made last year with much fanfare to gain world support for his Iraqi debacle. Al Qaeda couldn't be happier.

So while this record of disaster piles up all around Mr. Bush, he goes out on the stump and acts like these events aren’t happening while giving speeches that undercut himself while he gives them:

My opponent says he has a plan for Iraq. Parts of it should sound pretty familiar -- it's already known as the Bush plan.

And then, several lines later,

In Iraq, Senator Kerry has a strategy of retreat; I have a strategy of victory.

But at least the White House managed to put exclamation points after the “Booo’s”.

Worse yet, he has returned to running on his discredited 2000 campaign mantra, as if the last four years hadn’t totally disproven his claims or convinced many that Bush is a fringe right winger.

"My opponent is a tax-and-spend liberal; I'm a compassionate conservative."

Maybe the Kerry campaign will get a clip of Bush claiming again to be a compassionate conservative and make a commercial out of it with the tons of evidence to the contrary.

The wheels are coming off right in front of us, folks, both in the Bush campaign and in the world.