Pat Roberts Fires Back

One of the primary behind-closed-doors targets of the Democrats' Rule 21 tantrum the other day was Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS). And unlike Senate Majority Doofus Bill Frist, who after the doors opened back up sounded like a gilted lover or something, Senator Roberts knew just how to fire back, and unloaded his first salvo on CNN's American Morning:

ROBERTS: Well, now the issue is back up again. I'm tell you what I'm going to do.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: What's that?

ROBERTS: There are a lot of public statements by members of Congress on the Democrat side that are more declarative and more aggressive than anything anybody ever said on the Administration side, we're going to make those public statements public.

I can't beat Rush Limbaugh's enthusiasm, so I'll let him take the narrative from here:

Amen! Amen! Amen! It's about time! Instead of running around out there saying, "They hurt my feelings!" We're going to throw it right back in your face, and I have what he's talking about right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. He's right. When he said these Democrats made more declarative and more aggressive statements than anything anybody ever said on the Administration side, he's right, because you have to remember the context. The context was 2002, the upcoming elections, the mid-terms. The people of this country were solidly behind going to war and wiping out terrorism because of 9/11. The Democrats had already broken with the President on that. The Democrats thought they could seize an opportunity to distance themselves from that and when they saw the public polling and they saw the eagerness of the American people and they heard the President go through all the presentations to the Security Council at the United Nations they demanded a second resolution.

And because context is everything....

People forget this. They forget this, but I don't. Shortly after 9/11 happened, the United States Congress gave the President a resolution that in effect was a blank check; he could launch military action at any time, at any place, on any basis that he found necessary to protect this country. Well, they demanded another debate and another resolution so that they could show the American people that they as Democrats were not war wimps, that they were tough, that they were a bunch of Rambos, too, and terrorists were not going to get away with killing us. They demanded it. They demanded that debate in the middle of the 2002 midterm campaign, and I remember saying to you people at that time, "This is a great rope-a-dope because now they're not talking about what they think are their 'kitchen table issues,' their 'back-pocket issues,'" health care, education, gas prices, whatever the hell it was back then. No, they had to sound tough as nails on the war, too, and that's what Roberts means. They made more powerful statements about Saddam Hussein's danger than the Administration was making.

Let us now go down memory lane, and relive all the jingoistic bluster that Democrats have been trying for three years to make the American public, but especially their own lunatic base, forget:

-Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), September 19th, 2002: "We begin with a common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."

-Al Gore, September 23rd, 2002: "We know that [Saddam Hussein] has stored nuclear supplies, secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country....Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."

-Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), September 27th, 2002: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

-Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) October 3rd, 2002: "The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of '98. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons."

-Senator John Kerry (D-MA), October 9th, 2002: "I will be voting to give the president of the US the authority to use force if necessary to disarm Saddam because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."

-Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), October 10th, 2002: "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock. His missile delivery capability, his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists including Al-Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."

-Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), October 10th, 2002: "There was unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. We also should remember that we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."

-Then-Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), December 2002: "We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has and has had for a number of years a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."

-Senator John Kerry (D-MA), January 23rd, 2003: "Without question we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator leading an impressive regime. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he's miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction."

This is what these Donks, trying to prove that they were just as well-hung as that cowboy cretin from Crawford, had to say publicly when it was time to commit the country to the next military campaign in the GWOT, based upon the very same intelligence that the President and the rest of the Western world had to work with.

But just to head off the sixty-seven kabillionth repetition of the "BUSH LIED!!!" excuse, let's go back several years further, to the mythical golden age of Hamelot and see what Bill Clinton and his band of merry persons had to say on the same topic.

-Secretary of State Aunt Madeleine, February 1st, 1998: "We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and the security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction."

-President Bill Clinton, February 17th, 1998: "If Saddam rejects peace, and we have to use force, our purpose is clear: We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."

-National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, February 18th, 1998: "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again as he has ten times since 1983."

-From a letter to President Clinton signed by Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and other Donks, October 9th, 1998: "We urge you, after consulting with Congress and consistent with the US Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."

-Representative "Crazy Nancy" Pelosi (D-Nora Desmond Society), December 16th, 1998: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

-Secretary of State Aunt Madeleine, November 10th, 1999: "Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."

This stuff is absolutely devastating to the Democrats' anti-war justification because it smacks them coming AND going:

1) It shows that the Democrats were making the very same case for war with Saddam Hussein that George W. Bush did before Dubya even announced his presidential candidacy.

2) It shows that they either didn't really believe their own public rhetoric, in which case they were all hat and no cattle, or they did believe it as long as they were in power but were more than willing to irresponsibly subordinate it to narrow, selfish partisan interests once they were ousted in 2000. And in neither case were they willing to actually do anything about it, a factor of which both Saddam and Osama bin Laden (who issued his fatwa against the United States in 1998) took careful note.

3) It shows that they could not possibly have been "duped" into voting for war two years later, and that they cannot seriously mount that argument without condemning Bill Clinton as a liar as well.

The above is, of course, already well-plowed ground. Hell, the "Plamegate" kerfuffle was consigned to the dustbin of discredited gotchas over a year ago, and the Dems are still flogging away at it. That seems to be a pattern with them, doesn't it? The President rolls out Judge Samuel Alito to be the next Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and right on schedule the lefties start right down their talking points checklist - he's "out of the mainstream," he's "a threat to civil rights," he'll vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, etc., etc., etc. - just like they did with Chief Justice John Roberts. Gas prices go up and they start bashing "Big Oil" again. "Plamegate" as Watergate. Iraq as Vietnam. Bush is a dunce. Cheney is the puppeteer. Rove should be fired. On and on and on, over and over and over. Never mind having no ideas, these people haven't had so much as a single original thought since I was in grade school. I don't know if it's "mental illness" as Limbaugh half-jests or some sort of mass lobotomy that took place when nobody was paying attention.

They say that one definition of insanity is trying an unsuccessful tactic over and over again in the hopes that by sheer repetition and/or statistical inevitability it will eventually work. I've never understood how even that "strategy" can be adapted to raving, lying, lunatic, assholery. But if they want to keep refighting battles in which they've taken one ass-kicking after another, and truly believe that that is their path back to power, I say let's oblige them.

Someone once said it is sometimes better to be known for your enemies. As bleeped-up as the Republican ruling establishment has become more or less across the policy board, that may be the best asset they've got going for them.

I just hope they're willing to exploit it.

Let Pat Roberts be their guide.