OAK RIDGE, Tennessee, 13 July 2004 — Dogged by election-year doubts over the invasion of Iraq, US President George W. Bush insisted yesterday that the war was justified despite the failure to find weapons of mass destruction there. “Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq,” he said after touring a facility that houses nuclear materials recently handed over by Libya.
“We removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them,” said Bush. “In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take,” he said.
“America must remember the lessons of September the 11th. We must confront serious dangers before they fully materialize.” Bush’s central public rationale for war centered on Iraq’s alleged arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, none of which have been found, and supposed ties to Al-Qaeda, which have been dismissed by the official investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by Osama Bin Laden’s network.
The US Senate Intelligence Committee reported last week that the US intelligence community mischaracterized the threat posed by Iraq. But the panel, which was controlled by members of Bush’s Republican Party, put off looking into the administration’s role in shaping and using the information until after the Nov. 2 election.
“The Senate Intelligence Committee has identified some shortcomings in our intelligence capabilities. The committee’s report will help us in the work of reform,” said Bush.
The central theme of Bush’s speech was that “Americans are safer” because of the policies he has pursued since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but he warned that deadly dangers still threaten the United States. “The terrorists are ruthless and resourceful, and we know they’re preparing to attack us again,” he said.
Meanwhile, a group of high-level US scholars said yesterday that Bush’s “arrogant” foreign policy is damaging his country’s standing in the world and threatening the safety of Americans living abroad,.
Around 200 American students — 30 of them winners of the prestigious Rhodes scholarship previously held by former US President Bill Clinton — wrote an open letter warning that Bush’s actions have been “divisive and polarizing”.
“We ... find it increasingly difficult to defend America against accusations that our country has misused its power,” the letter said. “We witness daily how decisions that reinforce a perception of American arrogance are undermining rather than strengthening America’s security goals and the safety of our citizens at home and abroad.”
The letter was distributed by a group called Win Back Respect, a political group campaigning to “rebuild damaged relationships between the US and the rest of the world.”
“During the past three years we have witnessed a dramatic change in attitudes toward the United States,” the students wrote. They said criticisms of Washington — accusing it of failing to listen to other countries, misrepresenting intelligence, pursuing war before other alternatives were exhausted, evading the Geneva Conventions, and torture and violations of human rights — were increasingly difficult to defend.
“Our country was given an exceptional opportunity after Sept. 11 to marshal the support of the world and strengthen international organizations, but instead the actions of the Bush administration have been divisive and polarizing.”
