Friday, July 25, 2003
Cheney says war critics ignore proof - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics
In a rare public appearance, the vice president cited a now-declassified intelligence document in which six U.S. security agencies concurred that "Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" and "could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material."
"This warning could hardly be more blunt or disturbing," Mr. Cheney said in a speech to about 200 people at American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
"To shrug off such a warning would have been irresponsible in the extreme. And so President Bush faced that information and acted to remove the danger." [...]
Impression: Dick Cheney is finally speaking out a bit more to answer the critics. Bush needs more of this. The critics are recycling the same arguments they lost with before military action, and they need to be answered again. It's a never ending cycle but it needs to be done, and it's good that Cheney himself is doing it, since his name always seems to be at the center of the controversy.
The critics won't rest until the victory and rebuilding in Iraq is turned into a massive failure. They can't wait to re-write history on the reasons and turn over reconstruction to the incompetent and corrupt UN and EU. The administration needs to stop hemming and hawing and pointing at each other and answer the damn nay-sayers. The power of riteous argument was on their side before the war and it still is.
