As gas prices climb above $4 a gallon, home foreclosures mount, the jobless rate creeps up and the value of the dollar falls in the global market, the polls say more Americans are now concerned about their pocketbooks than about the war in Iraq.
In terms of the presidential election, the surveys indicate the state of the economy is now the prime issue on which most voters are assessing the two prospective major-party nominees. John McCain and Barack Obama are already accusing each other of failing to address the nation?s woes at home.
But the voters have ample reason not to be diverted from the war, if only because it has such obvious ramifications on the American economy. The huge direct cost to taxpayers in manpower maintenance, arms and equipment, in construction of U.S. facilities in Iraq, and reconstruction of the shattered country all are hitting Americans in their wallets.
Beyond the cost, however, voters need to make November?s election a referendumon the war once again, as it was in 2006. In another reminder of the utter folly of Bush?s grand misadventure, a long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report on how it happened has provided more detail on how President Bush started the war on the basis of faulty intelligence and exaggerated interpretations. The report is similar to the charges aired in the new tell-all book of Bush?s former press secretary, Scott McClellan.
Approved by a vote of 10-5, the report was backed by all eight Democrats on the committee and also two Republicans who have been critical of the war, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Susan Collins of Maine. The remaining Republicans dismissed it as “inconclusive, misleading and incomplete.”
The document, however, said the administration?s “suggestions that Iraq and al Qaeda had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al Qaeda with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence examined by the committee.”
The chairman of the committee, Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, wrote: “The president and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks [on 9/11] to use the war against al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.”
White House press secretary Dana Perino called the report “a selective review” of old stuff, adding that “the fact that the intelligence turned out to be wrong on WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] does not mean that anyone purposefully lied.”
But Rockefeller observed: “There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate. Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent picture of the threat we faced.”
Such comments may be getting lost in the public concern over the state of the economy. But the circumstance that the two major contenders for the presidency in November clearly reflect the two major views on the war should be enough to make what has gone on in Iraq since the last election the prime voting issue.
The congressional elections of 2006 were largely waged as a referendum on the war, and the Democratic takeover of Congress was widely interpreted as a call to get out of Iraq. Instead, a U.S. troop surge encouraged by McCain was a defiant president?s answer, setting up the 2008 presidential election as another such referendum.
McCain will be contending that the calamity that the war became was because it was not fought his way, and now that his advice is being followed by Bush, it deserves the support of the American people. Obama will be repeating his argument that the war never should have been fought in the first place, and that continuing against the people?s will can?t be justified.
The economy is a worry, to be sure, and certainly needs to be addressed by both candidates between now and Election Day. But the war in Iraq is a catastrophe, and it deserves their precedence, and the voters? as well.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington, D.C., for more than 50 years. His latest book, on the Nixon-Agnew relationship, is “Very Strange Bedfellows.” [email protected].
