1115.org

Remember back when George Bush was a trigger-happy gun-toting cowboy bad-ass, swaggering in the saloons, talking tough talk, threatening destruction and a fate worse than death to Saddam Hussein (but not Iraq)? And, of course, no one can fault him for only talking the talk. He more than fully walked the walk, even though Saddam merely got captured and it was Iraq that has suffered the fate worse than death.

But this post is not about the rape of Iraq. It’s about the light that this week’s North Korea developments shed on the pre-Iraq-invasion rhetoric of George Bush.

Bush’s attitude to North Korea pretty much proves, does it not, that the Bush administration was perfectly aware at the time that Saddam did not possess WMDs? The difference between the Iraq rhetoric and the North Korea rhetoric speaks for itself.

That was then. President Bush, March 6, 2003:

Saddam Hussein has a long history of reckless aggression and terrible crimes. He possesses weapons of terror. … Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people.

If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001 showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.

We are determined to confront threats wherever they arise. I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons.
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Our demands are that Saddam Hussein disarm. We hope he does. We have worked with the international community to convince him to disarm. If he doesn’t disarm, we’ll disarm him.

This is now. President Bush, October 11, 2006:

The United States remains committed to diplomacy.

Or Condi:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted in a CNN interview that President Bush has told the North Koreans “there is no intention to invade or attack them. So they have that guarantee. … I don’t know what more they want.”

But Rice also said the decision by Pyongyang to go ahead with its nuclear program means it likely will see “international condemnation and international sanctions unlike anything that they have faced before.”

We’ll slap them with strongly worded condemnations. And we won’t ever talk to them one-on-one again.

When someone possesses WMDs, you treat them with kid gloves. You certainly don’t swagger about, shooting your mouth off with that wild cowboy talk, promising to f*** them five ways to Friday.