an assessment, not an editorial
Mar. 11th, 2004 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsyche"War president" Bush more focused on September 11 than Iraq
One year after the war in Iraq, US President George W. Bush eagerly uses the September 11 attacks for his reelection bid while treating the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein as more of a liability.
The mounting death toll among US troops in Iraq and the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction at the core of the case for war have turned military victory into political headache ahead of the November 2 vote.
"Iraq, at best, is mixed for the president: He may have captured Saddam Hussein, but US casualties are higher, Iraqi casualties have risen," according to presidential historian Allan Lichtman of American University in Washington.
So while Bush's first major advertisement blitz loudly evokes details from the 2001 terrorist attacks that left 3,000 people dead -- including firefighters carrying a flag-covered stretcher out of smoldering New York rubble, sirens blaring in the background -- it is mute on the campaign in Iraq.
In fact, the commercials mention the 2001 recession, corporate scandals, the popping of the technology-stock bubble, job losses, the need to improve schools and health care, but not one word about the US-led occupation.
Although Bush has refused to budge on the June 30 deadline for transferring sovereignty, Iraq's political future is clouded in doubt, which makes bold assertions about success there dangerous.
[...] [One] question is whether inquiries into the yawning gap between Bush's pre-war claims about Iraqi weapons and the failure to find them will vindicate charges from critics who say the president misled the public on the threat, said Davis.
The US leader inoculated himself against that danger last month, when he grudgingly appointed a panel to investigate Iraq intelligence but set its final report for March 2005, well after the November election.
And in speech after speech, he tackles charges that he overstated the danger, arguing that there was an international consensus even among nations that opposed the war that Saddam was "a threat".
One year after the war in Iraq, US President George W. Bush eagerly uses the September 11 attacks for his reelection bid while treating the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein as more of a liability.
The mounting death toll among US troops in Iraq and the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction at the core of the case for war have turned military victory into political headache ahead of the November 2 vote.
"Iraq, at best, is mixed for the president: He may have captured Saddam Hussein, but US casualties are higher, Iraqi casualties have risen," according to presidential historian Allan Lichtman of American University in Washington.
So while Bush's first major advertisement blitz loudly evokes details from the 2001 terrorist attacks that left 3,000 people dead -- including firefighters carrying a flag-covered stretcher out of smoldering New York rubble, sirens blaring in the background -- it is mute on the campaign in Iraq.
In fact, the commercials mention the 2001 recession, corporate scandals, the popping of the technology-stock bubble, job losses, the need to improve schools and health care, but not one word about the US-led occupation.
Although Bush has refused to budge on the June 30 deadline for transferring sovereignty, Iraq's political future is clouded in doubt, which makes bold assertions about success there dangerous.
[...] [One] question is whether inquiries into the yawning gap between Bush's pre-war claims about Iraqi weapons and the failure to find them will vindicate charges from critics who say the president misled the public on the threat, said Davis.
The US leader inoculated himself against that danger last month, when he grudgingly appointed a panel to investigate Iraq intelligence but set its final report for March 2005, well after the November election.
And in speech after speech, he tackles charges that he overstated the danger, arguing that there was an international consensus even among nations that opposed the war that Saddam was "a threat".