Couric and Kline on Iraq

Speaking at the National Press Club Tuesday evening, CBS “Evening News” anchor Katie Couric pulled back the curtain on her personal views of both the war in Iraq and former “Evening News” anchor Dan Rather.

“Everyone in this room would agree that people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war,” said Couric, adding that it is “pretty much accepted” that the war in Iraq was a mistake.

“I’ve never understood why [invading Iraq] was so high on the administration’s agenda when terrorism was going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that [Iraq] had no true connection with al Qaeda.”

HOLY MOLY – this woman is the face of CBS news and here is her insulated, very incurious and weirdly uninformed take on the most important story of the day…”everyone in this room would agree that people were misled” and it’s “pretty much accepted,” that the war was a mistake. She “never understood” about Iraq?

Well, if it’s “pretty much accepted,” that the war was a mistake, that would be thanks in large part to the media machine that has done a great deal to help people forget why we went in there in the first place, a machine that has reported the things it has chosen to report, and left the rest to go unremarked upon. MUST we give a refresher to Ms. Couric? MUST we remind her that it was the policy of the United States ever since – under Bill Clinton – we established the Iraq Liberation Act in which we stated our intention to depose Saddam Hussein, not only because he’d tried to assassinate an American President (remember? – scroll down the link) but because we believed, the world believed, everyone believed – St. Bill Clinton, and his holy chorus believed – that Saddam had a huge stockpile of WMD, and in a post 9/11 world, Ms. Couric, any president – ANY president – would have been stupid, foolhardy, irresponsible and remiss NOT to go after Saddam Hussein.

Are people’s memories really that short? Does Katie not remember that President Bush went to the UN and talked about much more than WMD as a reason to liberate Iraq. He laid out NUMEROUS reasons, completely SPELLED THEM OUT for you, based on the intelligence he had – intelligence, btw, which Mrs. Clinton said in 2003 was “consistant with what we saw in the White House” back when she and Bill were co-presiding. Are you the least bit curious, Ms. Couric?

1. Iraq’s government openly praised the September 11th attacks on America
2. Iraq shelters and supports terrorist organizations
3. Saddam Hussein has an appetite for nuclear weapons
4. Saddam likely possesses biological and chemical weapons
5. Saddam’s repression of the Iraqi people
6. Saddam’s Abuse of Children
7. Violence against women
8. Iraq has not returned prisoners
9. Saddam possesses prohibited missiles
10. Weapons inspectors have been shut out of Iraq for four years

Invading Iraq took out Saddam, liberated a tyrannized people…we’ve had difficulty helping the Iraqi’s to their feet – after 35 years of tyranny, torture and subjugation it’s not easy to get people to trust themselves and each other. Mistakes have been made, for certain. But is Katie Couric really going to say that it was a “mistake” to do these things, especially based on the intel we had? It seems to me that if anyone but President Bush had led this invasion, the press’ take on it would be very different. If a President Clinton had done it, we’d be hearing stories about whether or not he (or she) should be added to Mt. Rushmore. No, I’m not exaggerating.

So, recap: from 1998 to 2003, the liberation of Iraq was the stated policy of the United States Government. Everyone believed Saddam had WMD. After 9/11, such a one – so armed – could not be permitted to remain in power.

Ms. Couric, instead of opining on this with nothing but your comfortable social clique narrative behind you, why not get a little curious and find out who gave Bill Clinton all that bad intel, to start with? Where did it come from and why? That’s a question I never see anyone in the press wonder about.

Jonah Goldberg has more thoughts on Couric’s remarks.

Update on good news in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Powerline has a good piece linking to the story of what Congressman Kline – who knows a thing or two about the military – found when he went to Iraq.

“The security situation there is just truly amazing. Just amazing,” he said in a telephone interview. Kline said the Marine battalion commander there told the lawmakers that violence is way down.

“One of the great advantages of going is you can look and get a sense of what the atmosphere is,” Kline said. “People are going about their business, the shops are open, they’re walking around the street.”

You may as well go read it there; you won’t read it on any page one. I doubt it will lead any news programs.

Others weighing in: Pajamas Media has a good round up
amused cynic