Democrats, Where Do You Stand?

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas.

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The headline of a Roll Call article on Tuesday — "Democratic Agenda Off for 2005" — wasn't exactly breaking news to anyone who has paid attention to Congress over the past few years. Though Democrats continue an organized campaign to find something — anything — to justify their anger at the president, they have yet to develop a campaign for anything.

The article quoted a Democrat who said: "This fall is not the time for Democrats to roll out a positive agenda." But neither is winter, spring or summer, apparently. We still haven't seen what they're for, only what and who they are against (namely, everything and everyone the president proposes). While the Republicans are making progress on issues that matter to real people, Democrats are struggling to find something to stand for.

Nowhere is this dearth of Democrat ideas more stark than in the debate over the war on terror. Democrats have consistently raised the twin specters of manipulating intelligence and failing to have a plan in Iraq. Both are false, and both are offered in lieu of plans, a viable agenda, or a position on a critical aspect of our national security.

Bad-Intel Spin

Democrats, in the Senate and elsewhere, believe they've hit upon a winning political strategy: Telling anyone who will listen that the administration has manipulated intelligence and has exaggerated the threat. But that line of attack itself is the manipulation of facts; a complete revision of recent history: Recall that only a few years ago Democrats joined Republicans in a bipartisan acknowledgment that Saddam Hussein posed a grave threat to the world.

In fact, it was the Senate that unanimously passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 which called for supporting efforts to overthrow Saddam Hussein. And it was President Clinton who so eloquently described the threat posed by Hussein and the consequences of inaction when he said:

"Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war against his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them."

Did President Clinton lie when he discussed the intelligence that led him to support the forced ouster of Saddam Hussein? Did he manipulate intelligence to justify his bombing in Iraq? Or did he rely upon the same intelligence that this administration and this Congress and our allies did when they came to the same conclusion that Saddam was a threat to the region and to the world — including the same Democrats who now demand investigation after investigation into this same intelligence?

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