What a difference a year makes.
In last year's State of the Union address, President Bush based his argument for attacking Iraq on his claim that Saddam Hussein had arsenals of weapons of mass destruction that posed "a serious and mounting threat to our country."
He also maintained that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological agents that "could also kill untold thousands."
But in this year's State of the Union address, Bush failed to mention the inconvenient fact that U.S. inspectors have failed to find any of those arsenals and stockpiles, despite searching Iraq for eight months.
No big thing. This year, it wasn't weapons. Instead, it was "programs," as in: If Bush hadn't invaded Iraq, "the dictator's weapons-of-mass-destruction programs would continue to this day," as he put it.
This effort to equate arsenals with programs -- whatever those are -- amounts to Bush's Plan B in his continuing search for a justification for the invasion.
He has moved on -- and he desperately wants the nation to do so, too. Indeed, the public may be willing to let this administration hype fade into history. It could be that the public has been reassured by Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent statement that, regardless of the lack of actual weapons, Saddam had the "intention" of amassing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
This is the same secretary of state who, last Feb. 5, laid his prestige and credibility on the line by telling the world that Iraq had stockpiles of unconventional weapons. His stunning two-hour presentation to the U.N. Security Council convinced many Americans and helped pave the way to war.
Powell's efforts to spin himself out of that credibility gulch are unbecoming. Rather than sugarcoat past mistakes, the general would be saluted if he acknowledged them. It would be his badge of honor. But then our leaders rarely bring themselves to do that.
With the presidential campaign now underway, we can hope that the eventual Democratic nominee will have the courage to take a stand against Bush's strategy of preemptive war, a note sounded by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., after the president's hour-long speech.
"The president led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence; he embraced a radical doctrine of pre-emptive war, unprecedented in our history and he failed to build a true international coalition," she declared.
Pelosi also said that the war had cost "a colossal $120 billion and rising." Billions of dollars "in no-bid contracts," she declared, had gone to "politically connected companies like Halliburton. . ."
On her point about the president's go-it-alone approach, it's become obvious that Bush has had second-thoughts about seeking support from others, at least when it comes to the frustrating nation-building efforts in Iraq.
After arrogantly turning his back on the United Nations, he now has had to return to the world body for many favors, such as asking the United Nations to intervene to dissuade the Iraqi Shiites from demanding direct elections before the U.S. pullout.
U.S. policymakers prefer a transitional government picked by Iraqi caucuses.
So suddenly Bush is discovering diplomacy. Perhaps he has decided that the preventive war doctrine -- promoted by his neo-con advisers -- is not all it was cracked it up to be.
Or it could be that the reelection campaign is giving him second thoughts about military adventures.
By the Pentagon's count, 503 Americans have died in the war and 2,508 have been wounded. The Defense Department does not keep track of Iraqi casualties. A spokesman told me, "The numbers don't count."
By wrapping himself in the mantle of the commander-in-chief responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which he has conceded had absolutely no connection to Iraq, the president may hope to tiptoe past these tragic costs and win re-election in November.
Before then, I hope the Democratic presidential nominee makes the effort to raise the troublesome questions about whether this price is worth it, given the phony excuses that the administration used for attacking Iraq in the first place.
Copyright Hearst Newspapers 2004
