Published on Monday,
February 9, 2004 by HYPERLINK |
http://www.newsday.com/"Newsday
/ Long Island, NY
by Scott Ritter
On April 23, 1971, a 27-year-old Navy
veteran named John Kerry sat
before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and chided members on their leadership failures regarding the war
in Vietnam.
"Where is the leadership?" Kerry, a
decorated hero who had proved his courage under fire, demanded of the
senators. "Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have
returned?" Kerry lambasted those who had pushed so strongly for war in
Vietnam. "These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a
pious shield of public rectitude."
Today, on the issue of the war in Iraq,
it is John Kerry who is all pious rectitude.
"I think the administration owes the
entire country a full explanation on this war - not just their
exaggerations but on the failure of American intelligence," Kerry said
following the stunning announcement by David Kay, the Bush administration's
former lead investigator in Iraq, that "we were all
wrong" about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in that country. The
problem for Sen. Kerry, of course, is that he, too, is culpable in the
massive breach of public trust that has come to light regarding Iraq, WMD and
the rush to war.
Almost 30 years after his appearance
before the Senate, Sen. Kerry was given the opportunity to make good on
his promises that he had learned the lessons of Vietnam. During a visit
to Washington in April 2000, when I lobbied senators and representatives
for a full review of American
policy regarding Iraq, I spoke with John Kerry about what I held to be the hyped-up intelligence regarding the
threat posed by Iraq's WMD. "Put it in writing," Kerry told me, "and
send it to me so I can review what you're saying in detail."
I did just that, penning a
comprehensive article for Arms Control Today, the journal of the Arms Control
Association, on the "Case for the Qualitative Disarmament of Iraq." This
article, published in June 2000, provided a detailed breakdown of Iraq's
WMD capability and made a
comprehensive case that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat. I asked the Arms Control Association to send
several copies to Sen. Kerry's
office but, just to make sure, I sent him one myself. I never heard back from the senator.
Two years later, in the buildup toward
war that took place in the summer of 2002, the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, on which Kerry sits, convened a hearing on Iraq. At that
hearing a parade of witnesses
appeared, testifying to the existence of WMD in Iraq. Featured prominently was Khidir Hamza, the
self-proclaimed "bombmaker to Saddam," who gave stirring first-hand
testimony to the existence of not only nuclear weapons capability, but also
chemical and biological weapons as well. Every word of Hamza's testimony
has since been proved false.
Despite receiving thousands of phone calls, letters and e-mails demanding that dissenting expert
opinion, including my own, be aired at the hearing, Sen. Kerry
apparently did nothing, allowing a sham hearing to conclude with the finding that there
was "no doubt" Saddam Hussein
had WMD.
Sen. Kerry followed up this performance
in October 2002 by voting for
the war in Iraq. Today he justifies that vote by noting that he only approved the "threat of war," and that
the blame for Iraq rests with
President George W. Bush, who failed to assemble adequate international support for the war.
But this explanation rings hollow in the face of David Kay's findings that there are no
WMD in Iraq. With the stated
casus belli shown to be false, John Kerry needs to better explain his role not only in propelling our nation
into a war that is rapidly
devolving into a quagmire, but more importantly, his perpetuation of the falsehoods that got us there to begin
with.
President Bush should rightly be held
accountable for what increasingly appears to be deliberately misleading
statements made by him and members of his administration regarding the
threat posed by Iraq's WMD. If such deception took place, then Bush no
longer deserves the trust and
confidence of the American people.
But John Kerry seems to share in this
culpability, and if he wants to be the next president of the United
States, he must first convince the American people that his actions
somehow differ from those of the man he seeks to replace.
"Where is the leadership?" John Kerry
asked more than 30 years ago,
questioning a war that consumed life, money and national honor. Today this question still hangs in the air,
haunting a former Navy combat
veteran who needs to convince a skeptical nation that he not only has a plan to get America out of Iraq, but
also possesses the leadership
skills needed to avoid future
ill-advised adventures.
Scott Ritter, former UN chief inspector
in Iraq, 1991-1998, is the
author of
"HYPERLINK"
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