Sen Kennedy Uses Every Word
But the Obvious, 'Bush Lied'

In an address to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., Friday, Sen. Ted Kennedy gave one of the strongest public statements yet indicting the Bush administration for deliberately misleading the American public and world community about a non-existent urgency to justify its invasion of Iraq.

"In the march to war, the president exaggerated the threat. It was not nuanced. It was pure, unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a devious strategy to convince the American people that Saddam's ability to provide nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda justified immediate war," Kennedy stated.

He prepared the ground for these conclusions with substantial documentation of discrepancies between CIA and other credible intelligence estimates and public statements by Bush and top level cabinet officials over the period leading up to the invasion and afterwards.

Concerning the distortions, Kennedy asked, "Why would the administration go to such lengths to go to war? Was it trying to change the subject from its failed economic policy, the corporate scandals, and its failed effort to capture Osama bin Laden? The only imminent threat was the November congressional election. The politics of the election trumped the stubborn facts."

Kennedy went on, "What happened was not merely a failure of intelligence, but the result of manipulation and distortion of intelligence and the selective use of unreliable intelligence to justify a decision to go to war. The administration had made up its mind, and would not let stubborn facts stand in the way."

He quoted Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a recently retired Air Force intelligence officer who served in the Pentagon during the build-up to the war: "It wasn't intelligence, it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, usually by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."

Kennedy concluded, "Our men and women in uniform are still paying with their lives for this misguided war in Iraq. The Bush administration misrepresented the facts to justify war. No president who misleads the country on the need for war deserves to be re-elected. A president who does so must be held accountable."

During the question period, imminent retired newsman Daniel Schorr stood to ask Kennedy if he didn't feel Bush's deliberate distortions amounted to "high crimes and misdemeanors," which the standard code phrase for suggesting impeachment.

Certainly, that was the atmosphere Kennedy's remarks created in the crowded main hall of the Washington Club on DuPont Circle.

But Kennedy wouldn't "go there," to the question of impeachment, although one would have to wonder why not.

Using words like "distorted," "deliberately misled," and "misguided," one would also wonder why Kennedy wouldn't do one step further, and use the word that all those obviously implied. Why not say the obvious of the president, that "He lied?"

When I asked Kennedy just this question after the address, he became defensive. "I chose my words," he said, curtly. When I asked if he would ever use the words, "He lied," he reiterated only, "I chose my words."

Apparently, using the phrase, "He lied," steps over some kind of invisible but very real line, even though every other way of saying the same thing seems OK. The same with stopping short of concluding such lies rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

Kennedy, with his close ties to Sen. Kerry, may be looking out for his colleague by showing a modicum of restraint, even while tattooing Bush with as many scathing accusations as civil rhetoric allows.

Certainly, he's been one of my political favorites since I was present at the 1980 Democratic convention at Madison Square Garden when he gave perhaps the most impassioned speech of his life, but could not dislodge the majority of delegates pre-committed to the failed re-election effort of Jimmy Carter. I wish now, as I wished then, he could be the one at the head of his party's ticket.

But as he led the charge at his party's left flank for many years, and has been at the forefront among critics of the president's Iraq policy from the beginning, so must others stand at his left flank, saying what even he feels, for whatever reason, he might like to say but can't.

Therefore, I will reiterate. Based on what Sen. Kennedy documented Friday, the president is a liar. He looked the American people in the face as its commander-in-chief and willingly lied in order to needlessly place thousands of their sons and daughters in harm's way, destroy America's credibility globally and commit a myriad of other high crimes and misdemeanors. Based on the evidence Sen. Kennedy provided, the president should be impeached.