UNinformed

Did UN weapons inspectors in Iraq know that Saddam Hussein no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and did they fail to notify the Security Council? In other words, could the inspectors have averted war in Iraq? David Ignatius, writing in today's Washington Post, thinks so, and is basing his assumption on an interview with an Iraqi nuclear scientist.

Comments

[Big Dick Cheney]

"Sorties or not, they kept on doing it."

Your right we shouldn't have tried to stop it. We should have taken the lead of the UN that ignored the mass murders in Kosovo and Rwanda.

"What "treaty?""
Got me there, there was no "treaty" just an agreement that we stopped killing them for certain asssurances like they prove they don't have WMD.

"This is such a canard; at best his regime's links were tenuous, haphazard, and even comical."

Have you ever heard of Abbu Abbas and Abu Nidal? They lived in Paris...I mean Badhdad. Oh you might want to look at this link I saw today http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-12986177,00.html

"he said that some were not accounted for, etc"

Thats kinda the point isn't it?

"When did that happen? A democracy would require that someone actually voted!!!!! "

Now you're just being stupid.

[Big Dick Cheney]

S.A.S.S

Chill Dude. I was at Haliburton during that Ken Starr thing.

When I say Clinton, I don't really mean Clinton. I mean the professional portion of his administration that at least pretended like the rest of the world existed. In other words the U.S. Govt. offical position during the Clinton administration.

[alma hadayn]

"Have you ever heard of Abbu Abbas and Abu Nidal?"

Abu Nidal was dead before the war. Abu Abbas was a Palestinian who had been granted amnesty by the Israel government in a deal brokered by America. He has since traveled to Gaza with Israeli permission. I guess Israel supports Palestinian terrorism.

Have you ever heard of the Dawa group? They are an Iranian linked Shiite group which has long opposed the Hussein regime. They are believed to have blown up the US embassy in Kuwait in 1983. They are also currently represented on the Iraqi Governing Council.

[Huge Throbbing Dick Cheney]

"Abu Abbas was a Palestinian who had been granted amnesty by the Israel government in a deal brokered by America"

Do you mean the Oslo Accords? He was a terorist that killed Americans and was taken into custody by Americans in Bahgdad. He cannot hide behind women and children like the rest of the Palestinian Terrorists.

"Abu Nidal was dead before the war"

Why does it matter that Abu Nidal had been dead for 6 months when the war started? He was a know terrorist living under the protection of Saddam.

[Andrew]

I suppose the question is could Saddam Hussein have avoided a war?

Yes. He could have. Had Saddam been willing to do all the things he needed to do, he could have normalised his relations with the outside world any time from 1991 to 2003, and he had a pretty good idea of what would have been required.

He chose not to.

Perhaps, as some say, he believed he had weapons he didn't (reports are he ordered the "use" of non-existent weapons during the war...but THAT may have been a bluff).

Some say he wished to give the impression he had WMD he didn't...though that seems like an odd strategy to take to the bitter end.

It is at least imaginable that Saddam DID have wepons until 2003, and the trail of these WMD (wherever it leads) is being concealed.

One of the three explanations above HAS to be true-- that Saddam was merely an innocent man, much wronged against, would be hard to square with anything else you know about him, and the actual details of his conduct...who would care to make that case?

[alma hadayn]

I'll just repeat that Abu Abbas had traveled with permission in Israeli-occupied territory, so Israel is just as guilty of sheltering him as Iraq was.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, former spokesman for the terrorist group that blew up a US embassy in the 80s, currently sits on the Iraqi Governing Council.

So we went to war because of Saddam Hussein's terrorist links- a dead Palestinian and a Palestinian with a US approved amnesty.

[Jean Bart]

"Thats kinda the point isn't it?"

No, that's not the point at all; there is a large difference between saying that some weapons are not accounted for, and that said weapons still exist. They are not one and the same.

As to stupidity, well, claiming that Iraq has a "democracy" is stupid; there have been no elections, there is no constitution, and the only ruling "local" government are a group of U.S.-appointed members to a non-democratic "council."

[Jean Bart]

Cheney,

BTW, when you claim that Saddam had links to terrorism, what you are really trying to say is that Saddam's government supported terrorists, and would have been willing to use them, or support them, in attacks on the U.S. Neither of the examples that you gave us is an example of such; no evidence has been shown to demonstrate that the underlying accusation that I just outlined is true. The two characters were of course involved in attacks on Americans, etc.; but not under the pay of Iraq.

Andrew,

Nothing Hussein could have done after 9/11 could have avoided a war; no amount of trying to prove a negative would have worked (indeed, the hawks in and outside the Bush administration wanted a war under almost any circumstances it seems). Bush would have continued to trot out the line about Iraq being the size of California, blah blah blah. Indeed, short of actually resigning and fleeing to Saudi Arabia, he could not have avoided war, and even at that the U.S. would have likely wanted to send at least some force in.

[Dubya]

Saddam threatened my daddy! Now he threats no one.

[Byna]

Things that make me go hmmm.

From the article:
"The Iraqi regime initially decided to deceive U.N. inspectors about some aspects of the nuclear and biological programs for two reasons, Jafar said. First, to obscure the extent to which they had violated treaties against developing such weapons and, second, to minimize the destruction of the facilities where they had carried out the work. "

Hmmm.
"to minimize the destruction of the facilities where they had carried out the work."

Why, pray tell, would Iraq want to preserve these facilities after the stocks of WMD were destroyed? I know! They wanted to make baby formula! In the same facilities that used to produce anthrax!

Remember that it wasn't just the stock piles, it was also the programs that were forbidden to Iraq. This is another piece of evidence that Iraq had not abandoned its long term goal of developing WMD, thus making it a non-imminent threat the the US.

Byna, just quoting an Iraqi.

[Joe is a Dickus Cheney]

JB

Your comments are usually well informed, cogent, and interesting. In this particular discussion, I don't see your point.

If you protect and harbor a known murderer, whether or not you actually paid for the murder, you are guilty of murder.

That was murderous.

JB, did you know that we Southerners (as a group)have never been against US envolvement in any war?

[Jean Bart]

Cheney,

Well, I guess the U.S. needs to be invaded then; since after WWII you harbored a variety of murderous Nazis because they also happened to be useful. Indeed, some of these people actually killed my countrymen. Expect some Le Triomphant class SSBNs off your Atlantic coast in a few days. A few well-placed M-45 SLBMs should wake you up and make you turn those bastards (or their bones at least) over. 🙂

As to Southern positions on American wars, I would say that the war of aggrandizement against Mexico is a perfect example of such. 🙂

[Dick Weed Cheney]

JB

I guess we should have stayed home, that way you and all of the other French kids could have nice names like Hans and Otto 🙂

[Gadfly]

If this stuff was destroyed (mostly) in 1991 or even later, in 1995, why were we still flying over two thirds of the place, bombing it occasionally and restricting trade until we finally invaded in 2003? I think this is the point of the scientist in this article.

The idea of having a military presence in the mideast to protect our oil interests and give Israel a hand goes way back. Once we established it in GWI there was no way we were leaving and proving WMD didn't exist was just the excuse we needed to stay forever. Saddam's giving us the finger didn't hurt, either.

And proving that irony rules the world, our presence there, based on a lie, led directly to 911.

[Jean Bart]

Cheney,

You did stay home; in the late 1930s France begged the U.S. to wake up, pointing with ever greater distress at the rising Nazi threat. Our biggest mistake was not to plead as with the same vigor the Soviets until it was too late and they had already signed up with the Nazis. Before WWI, France created an alliance with the Russians and the British, and engratiated itself with the U.S., because we knew we could not defeat the Germans on our own (they having nearly twice our population and a 1/2 more of our industrial capacity); the same strategy was not as successful prior to WWII.

[Dickie Cheney]

alma hadayn

IMHO we went to war because of 9/11. Not that Saddam had anything to do with it. However, the corrupt governments of the middle east and their controlled media feed the people a steady diet of hate against America and the Jews. "It's the Jews and the Americans who keep you ignorant, in poverty, and eating sand and camel shit, it's not us".

This is one of the root causes of terrorism, and I believe our government feels that by forcing a regime change in Iraq will, in the long term, increase our leverage and influence to change the behavior of these governments if not the regimes themselves.

I also believe we went for oil. Not for the money from oil but the oil. The majority of the 9/11 cowards came from "Saudi" Arabia. The oil we can buy, I repeat, buy from the Iraqis can replace the oil that we BUY from the Saudis. This dynamic will give us more leverage to "convice" the Saudis to stop making their people live in the 16th century and fomenting terrorist that kill Americans.

Bottom Line - The middle east is a cesspool and we needed to shake things up there for our own protection. An excellent byproduct is that a region that has very little freedom might have a chance to emerge from the darkness.

asa lama lakem my brothers!

[Dick "gitting pissed off" Chen]

JB,

I guess my uncle, who is buried in France with thousands of other Americans, stayed home? No, you pompous ass he never came back.

[Jean Bart]

Cheney,

One of my uncles was tortured to death at the "Hotel Terminus" and another died at Dunkirk holding off the Germans so as to make good the British escape. And there is nothing particularly pompous about stating that the U.S. ignored what was happening in Europe in the 1930s; or as the American ambassador to France said in 1938, to paraphrase, "We love France; but don't expect us to die for you." Indeed, its no more pompous than saying that Britain and France screwed the Czechs ands Slovaks in 1938, or that the entire West put blinders on when it came to dealing with the Nazis.

Indeed, if the U.S. had been paying attention to the affairs in Europe, or cared about them, a lot less Americans would have died in WWII than did.

[Jean Bart]

Cheney,

Western powers have been trying to "shake up" the middle east since the days of the "Great Game"; indeed the U.S. is repeating the very same mistakes made by Britain and France in the area after WWI, and I fear it will only end with the same sad results.

[joe]

Dick's arguments for the war are very good. So good, in fact, that he had to wait until the nation was stunned into terror and obedience and make up a bunch of ther shit in order for them to be convincing.

September 14, Rumfeld was already writing a memo about taking advantage of the situation to get "not just OBL, but SH." Remember that this November. Your countrymen's blood = "Now's our chance!"

[thoreau]

Joe-

But they were just trying to avenge our countrymen's blood. This had nothing to do with exploiting tragedy for pre-established agendas. Really. Honestly. The Republicans said so, and you can believe the GOP because they're from the government and they're here to help.

[Dick]

JB,

That's right, It's the fault of the all-powerful US that we didn't do something (like what?) in the 30's when the French and British were placting the Nazis.

"U.S. is repeating the very same mistakes made by Britain and France in the area after WWI"

There is a little differnce. Franch and Britain were colonialist. I personally believe that the U.S motives in the middle east are defensive and altruistic.

Dickus (I mean Joe),

Why do you think we went to Iraq? If you think it's some kind of oil cabal or family retribution I actually pity you.

Thoreau,

Let's get high man.

[Jean Bart]

Dick,

"That's right, It's [sic] the fault of the all-powerful US that we didn't do something (like what?) in the 30's when the French and British were placting the Nazis."

(a) You are mis-characterizing my statement (but, that is expected, you are Dick Cheney after all); I neither claimed nor intimated that it was America's fault that France and Britain did not act more staunchly against the Nazis (try honesty next time); and if you can't take a little criticism for the isolationsionism of the U.S. in the 1930s, then tough shit. (b) As to what the U.S. could have done, well that's simple really; all the things it did after 1940 for example.

"There is a little differnce. Franch and Britain were colonialist. I personally believe that the U.S motives in the middle east are defensive and altruistic."

Actually, British and French motives were both defensive; for example, in the case of Britain, it felt like it had to occupy as a means to defend the Suez and Britain's interests in India. The Ottoman Empire had always been a great buffer against threats to India and the Suez, and with it gone, well, the U.K. had to do something to defend those interests.

And lot of altruistic statements went along with all of this of course; indeed, in occupying Egypt in the 1880s the UK declared it was doing as a means to help the Egyptians. America is no more altruistic in its concerns than the UK was after WWI.

[dick]

JB

"Indeed, if the U.S. had been paying attention to the affairs in Europe, or cared about them, a lot less Americans would have died in WWII than did."

Again, and I'm truly sorry if I am misunderstaning, it seems to me that you are saying that it was somehow a proper role for the U.S. to stop the Nazi rise to power?

"all the things it did after 1940 for example."

Do you mean military envolvement, Lend Lease, moral support? As I'm sure you know, the U.S. was in the middle of a devastating depression in the 30's. The very strong isolationist movement had a lot of support and it took Pearl Harbor to wake up the average American. After all we are just dumb Americans unwise to the ways of Europe. I'm quite sure that anything we would have done would have perceived as clumsy meddling. I'm half serious. America was (and still is) a young country and, because of many factors, have an inherent reluctance to become involved in European affairs. Especially in the 30's.

"occupy as a means to defend the Suez and Britain's interests in India"

As I said, empire.

[Andrew]

JB

Well, going to Saudi Arabia was certainly one option...does he like his present accomadations better? Was he fond of that spider-hole?

The US has been committed to regime change since the hawk Clinton made it US policy in 1998...but I am sure Saddam could have avoided a shooting war, even without resigning. An armed inspection could surely have been arranged, and he could have stymied an invasion by the world's two most powerful democracies by satisfying world opinion short even of that.

I guess you can prove a negative...everyone in this forum seems confident that David Kay DID prove a negative.

[Jean Bart]

This continues to be a classic case of making the facts fit the model.

[c]

As if the UN telling the Bush Admin. that there were no WMD would have made any difference at all.... Can you imagine how quickly they would have been disregarded??

When I saw Rummy was telling the senate armed services committee he needed more time to determine if there were WMD, I think I might have heard Hans Blix laughing all the way from here.

[Jean Bart]

c,

Rumsfeld is a bit like Churchill, at least as far as I can tell, in that he thinks that being noisy and belligerent is the best way to proceed in most cases. It led to disasters for Churchill and the causes he was committed to(indeed in one instance it helped bring down Tsarist Russia and nearly cost Britain and France WWI), and the same may be true for Rumsfeld.

[Todd Fletcher]

"Indeed, if the U.S. had been paying attention to the affairs in Europe, or cared about them, a lot less Americans would have died in WWII than did. "

And there we have the fucked Eurpoean attitude in a nutshell. Haughty and pleading at the same time. Can't you guys do anything right on your own?

[quaker120]

I agree with c.

Scott Ritter (former top UN weapons inspector in Iraq) spent most of 2002 saying that his team had destroyed all WMD in Iraq. Nobody--not even the media--paid him a damn bit of attention. Well, except those few right-wingers who spent a few minutes calling him "the new Jane Fonda," a "spy for Russia" and so on. He did a full hour interview on our local NPR station as well as a public forum on the issue & was extremely persuasive. Again, nobody cared. Then he mysteriously was accused of downloading kiddie porn and he vanished from the scene.

The point is, plenty of reputable sources (inlcuding Jane's Intelligence Service, those commie dove bastards) disputed the Bush/Rummy/Powell "evidence" but it made no difference.

[s.a.m.]

If Jafar is right, the U.N. inspectors had detailed evidence to rebut the arguments about Iraqi WMD made in the intelligence dossiers compiled by Britain and the United States that were a main justification for their March 2003 invasion. In the supercharged political atmosphere before the war, that evidence was either diluted, suppressed or ignored.

Pop Quiz Question:
What did the Bush Administration do with the evidence?
A) Dilute it.
B) Suppress it.
C) Ignore it.
D) All of the Above.
E) Irrelevant, the Bush Administration planned on invading Iraq since January 9th, 2001, when Bush was sworn in as the 43rd president of the United States.

[axiom]

Can someone remind me again why Hans Blix was chosen to head the UN team over Rolf Ekeus and David Kay? Heck, Richard Butler was also out there. Why Blix?

[alma hadayn]

"As if the UN telling the Bush Admin. that there were no WMD would have made any difference at all.... Can you imagine how quickly they would have been disregarded??"

It really does not require any imagining. On the nuclear issue, el Baradei of the IAEA said very clearly in early March that after "3 months of intrusive inspections" there was no "evidence or plausible indication" that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program.

How did the administration respond? Cheney went on Meet the Press and flatly announced that he thought el-Baradei was "wrong". I'm still waiting for the apology for that one.

[Dick Checney]

I don't apologize for:

Overthrowing a govt. that ignored our treaty that stopped the last war. (I have some respect for the U.S. soldiers that died in Gulf I)

Overthrowing a govt. that we had to fly 350,000 sorties to keep from killing its own people

Overthrowing a govt with undeniable links to international terrorism

Believing the same WMD intelligence as Clinton, France, Germany, Russia, Kofi, leftist weenies

Establishing a democracy in the asshole of the world (middle east) that will change the region for ever and help fight the root causes of terrorism

Kiss my apology.

[alma hadayn]

That's fine Dick. Apologizing for the lying will be sufficient.

[Jean Bart]

"Overthrowing a govt. that ignored our treaty that stopped the last war. (I have some respect for the U.S. soldiers that died in Gulf I)"

What "treaty?"

"Overthrowing a govt. that we had to fly 350,000 sorties to keep from killing its own people"

Sorties or not, they kept on doing it.

"Overthrowing a govt with undeniable links to international terrorism"

This is such a canard; at best his regime's links were tenuous, haphazard, and even comical.

"Believing the same WMD intelligence as Clinton, France, Germany, Russia, Kofi, leftist weenies"

This is another canard; at least with regard to the UN (Blix) and France. Blix, for example, never stated that Iraq had WMD or not; he said that some were not accounted for, etc. The U.S. spinmakers spun this into an acknowledgement that Iraq has WMDs.

"Establishing a democracy in the asshole of the world (middle east) that will change the region for ever and help fight the root causes of terrorism"

When did that happen? A democracy would require that someone actually voted!!!!!

[s.a.m.]

Believing the same WMD intelligence as Clinton...

WTF! Now you believe in a guy who you accused of 8 years of inactivity led to to 9/11, who you laugh at for blowing up asprin factories, and who did lie under oath that you and your buddies often like to bring up?

Wow Dick, after spending all these years tearing the man down at every level, you cite him as a legitimate source to justify your actions?

[joe]

Dick asks me, "Why do you think we went to Iraq?"

I'm not sure what this questions means. Who is "we?" Let me break it down.

The people who decided the direction of this administration's foreign policy - the PNAC crew - combine idealism, ignorance, and faith in military action as the solution to all the world's problems into a belief that we should wage a jihad on behalf of democracy across the developing world. The believe that conquoring and administering Iraq will lead to an American friendly regime (although this belief spreads out along a spectrum with commitment to liberal democracy on one pole, like Wolfowitz, and a preference for an obedient puppet on the other, like Rice). These people spent the 90s pushing for this war, and the 9/11 attacks and anthrax letters handed them ready-made justifications for their existing plans. In other words, it was comparable to those New Dealers who had been wanting to centralize the economy for years, and then claimed that the stock market crash was their motivation.

In addition, there are realpolitik reasons - control of oil fields, presence of the military is a strategic region, need to get bases out of the land of the two holy cities, desire to publically smack around a country, and what I like the call the "we don't need no steenking badges!" theory of internation relations - that is, that the inevitable stunning victory without the assistance of existing international institutions will cause their demise, and result in the world lining up behind our unipolar leadership.

The general public went along with this out of a desire for racial revenge (A-rabs killed our people, so let's kill us some A-rabs), a belief that the president wouldn't lie about an imminent threat to our lives, and a belief that winning a war would deter future security threats.

I think the looting (Halliburton's, not the locals') and coming sweetheart deals for American oil companies are more "business as usual" than actual motives for waging this war.

[Andrew]

Joe

Minus some of the editorial characterizations, I don't disagree with much of the above. Don't get the "racial revenge" take though. After 9/11, when I asked an Arab friend (chess-player) how he was doing, he said "People have been asking me all day." He sells cars, for Christ's sake!

A Turkish friend told me "In Turkey, we would have lynched every American in the country."

What would the reaction have been like in France?

[joe]

Andrew, while there were some racist assaults in this country, you're right, they were relatively few and far between. Most Americans seem to look at other Americans who happen to have accents or olive complexions as their fellow Americans.

But I think they look at Arabs on their televisions from other countries differently. In particular, I think they divide them into "good Arabs" and "bad Arabs," which is why they can hold "let's kill us some A-rabs" and "let's liberate the Iraqi people" in their heads at the same time.

I also find it plausible that their unwillingness to take their racial revenge on their fellow Americans made it psychologically necessary to find somewhere else to do it. I myself will admit to having some desire for Old Testament vengance around 11:00 on 9/11. "10,000 Americans? Fuck it, 10,000 of theirs." Moment of weakness.

[Andrew]

Well, making a distinction, Good/Bad could be like...reasonable?

If 9/11 changed the tolerance threshold, is that so off the mark? We under-reacted to previous Al-qaida attacks...and had a deplorable tendency to let sleeping reptiles lie in the Mid-East-- the more truly Nixonian preference (Clintonian).

Realpolitic is maybe too flattering a description for the kind of thing it is taken to describe. Everybody says their foreign policy prescription is realistic.

I like a quote from Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons"--

roughly, "Governors who govern from 'reasons of state', lead their realms down a short path to chaos."

[Jean Bart]

Todd Fletcher,

How is this a particularly "haughty" attitude? Oh no, I see, any criticism of the U.S. is haughty.

"Can't you guys do anything right on your own?"

We seemed to do a fairly good job of well, conquering the planet, inventing entire sciences, and all sorts of interesting and useful pieces and systems of technology. Indeed, America is one of Europe's greatest success stories. 🙂

But no, France could not defeat the Nazis on her own; it was impossible. Twice her population the Germans were, and triple her industrial capacity; indeed, France was still suffering what were termed "dead years" or "empty years" when conscription rates were so low do to the low-birth rate caused by the millions dead from WWI. Should we have acted less ambivalently towards the Nazis in the 1930s? Certainly! Would it have been nice for America to be paying attention to our shouts for aid in the 1930s? Yes.

You know, if you want to take all the credit for winning WWII, as many Americans appear are wont to do (a figment of their imagination really), you also have to take part of the blame for ignoring the events that led to WWII. You must take the sour with the sweet as they say.

dick,

"Again, and I'm truly sorry if I am misunderstaning, it seems to me that you are saying that it was somehow a proper role for the U.S. to stop the Nazi rise to power?"

America had no legal obligation to do so; Wilson had promised France in 1919 that America would check any future German aggression against France (or Belgium), but we never got this promise in a treaty, which was stupid on our part. Whether America had a moral obligation to do so, well, that is another matter, and for you to decide; I think America did have a moral obligation.

"The very strong isolationist movement had a lot of support and it took Pearl Harbor to wake up the average American."

Well, lend-lease occurred prior to Pearl Harbor; and France had tried to set-up a similar program with the U.S. in 1938. An alliance with the U.S. from 1936 was not created; but it was not for lack of attempting to do so - France through diplomatic channels, government sponsored cultural events in the U.S., etc. tried mightily to get America's attention.

"America was (and still is) a young country and, because of many factors, have an inherent reluctance to become involved in European affairs. Especially in the 30's."

I think America was captured by the same ambivalence and lack of will that was common in France and Britain in the 1930s; there was no clear decision as to what to do about events in Germany, so haphazard and failing attempts were made to address the issue, but no clear majority for a singular view ever came to the fore, well until it was too late.

"As I said, empire."

Exactly what the U.S. is doing in the middle east now.

[joe]

Andres, old style real politik conservatives like old Bush and Kissinger disgusted me.

Neo-con idealists like you, on the other hand, scare the piss out of me. Headiness and itchy trigger fingers are not a good combination.

Peace 🙂

[Jean Bart]

What all this reminds me of is Kitchner's unintended nightmare that we call the Middle East today; or rather, how we got to this point.

Andrew,

In 1996 when Paris suffered a series of bombings from Algerians we did not lynch every Algerian (there was also a spate of bombings in the mid-1980s - no lynching). Indeed, we've no death penalty since 1982, so that would not be possible. Americans tend to forget that Europe has not been immune to terrorism. However, we do tend to view this as more of a police matter; though admittedly, our police have military functions that American police do not (indeed, the national gendamerie - the national police force - is part of military). And when we do deal with these issues militarily, it is done quietly and in a surgical fashion.

[dj of raleigh]

Why didn't the UN accept the "facts" (statements by Jafar)
just because they had been decieved and resisted all along?
Everything was revealed and destroyed in 1991,
but then in 95 defectors told of bioweapons,
and then Kamel defected to tell about Nuclear program,
The inspectors were faked, fooled and kicked out.
Why didn't the UN realize the facts were there?
Why didn't the UN accept proof of the negative?
I'd say because Iraq had lost credibility of words.
If expectations were impressed on the viewing of facts then,
then expectations are being impressed on the viewing now.
This isn't about Iraq, but domestic politics,
and the persistent effort to brand "lie" on Bush,
taking away the 'trust' of him from the electorate.
The 'big picture' is lost to details and specifics,
and I believe Bush has lost the election as it goes.