{"id":10470,"date":"2017-08-10T10:05:47","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T17:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=10470"},"modified":"2017-08-10T10:05:47","modified_gmt":"2017-08-10T17:05:47","slug":"10470-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10470-2\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

From An Angry Reader:<\/h3>\n

To: Prof. Victor Davis Hanson<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

At the end of your interview with Scott Simon on 8 July 2017 I heard this: \u201cAnd look how they took a good man like George Bush and turned him into a monster\u201d. It caught my attention.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the few things I agree with Donald J Trump about is what he had to say on the campaign trail about George W Bush, his administration, 911, and the Iraq war. I don\u2019t think I need to remind you but: The Bush Administration was informed repeatedly by the outgoing Clinton administration that Osama Bin Laden was determined to attack the US on its own soil. So the Bush Administration failed to act on the real intelligence it had. Donald J Trump said as much. Donald J Trump thought that the George W Bush and his Administration lied to congress and the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said so. Now I don\u2019t believe this is true because Trump said so, I believe it because I used the same straight up news reporting to come to my conclusions Trump did. Reporting by people with years of credibility at major news organizations brought me the following:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The \u2018Yellowcake from Nigeria\u2019 paper is a phony. With real yellowcake, billions of dollars, the right people, and a couple of years perhaps you have a deliverable weapon.<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. Iraq had been under embargo since the first Gulf war. They didn\u2019t even have GPS for their troops in the desert, much less centrifuges, aluminum tubes, or a way to get a nuclear weapon to the US.<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. Hans Blixt and his team had found all but nothing that suggested a current WMD program. No program.<\/em><\/li>\n
  4. Secretary of State Powell\u2019s presentation at the United Nations was unconvincing. If the Bush Administration had something real to show let the public see it.<\/em><\/li>\n
  5. All assertions of great danger to the public in the press were coming from the Bush and Blair administrations or parrots in Commons, Congress and the Right wing press.<\/em><\/li>\n
  6. Real reporters have ways of getting information out of places like Iraq under Saddam Hussein There was silence. No intelligence is intelligence too.<\/em><\/li>\n
  7. Finally an \u2018intelligence estimate\u2019 (which is all they had), is an estimate. Not a \u2018slam dunk\u2019.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    On the basis of the above I believed there was little chance Iraq had wmd\u2019s. There is no Bill Maher or Steven Colbert or any one like them leading to my conclusion that the Bush and Blair Administrations lied. If George W Bush\u2019s reputation suffers from this so be it. I have in laws who still think of George W Bush as a \u201clovely Christian man\u201d I don\u2019t. I think \u201cmonster\u201d is not as accurate as war criminal. He\u2019s a war criminal along with Cheney and Rumsfeld et al. who supported this lie. My opinion of George W Bush is not based on Left wing comics and commentators and I don\u2019t need to use foul or abusive language. I\u2019m as angry as those who do. So no weapons of mass destruction. Plenty of lies and death. America should face up to this. I hoped to hear more when Trump brought it up. All I heard was the sound of pearls being clutched Left and Right. Let\u2019s not let something so wrong happen again. We would be living in a different world if the SCOTUS cared about who won Florida in 2000.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    Have a nice day.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    Reuel Kenyon<\/em><\/p>\n

    ______________<\/p>\n

    Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:<\/h3>\n

    Dear Angry Reader Reuel Kenyon,<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Bill Clinton is not a good source for bin Laden on any matter; his appeasement after terrorist attacks emboldened bin Laden, and he turned down an offer from Middle Eastern nations to arrest bin Laden and extradite him to the U.S.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    All these issues have been adjudicated. Bush did not \u201clie\u201d but relied on the intelligence of the era\u2014from the CIA (\u201cslam dunk\u201d), NSA, and DIA, and from foreign intelligence services such as those in Jordan and Egypt that warned us that our troops would come under missile chemical attack while mustering in Kuwait (was that an international conspiracy, one that prompted tens of thousands of chemical mask protection kits to be issued to our troops?).<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    But more importantly, did you ever read the joint Congressional authorizations of October 2002 for the war\u2014the official and legal basis for undertaking the war?<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    There were some 23 writs; only 3-4 concerned WMD. Most cited genocide, violation of UN accords, destruction of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, the Clinton era liberation act, bounties for suicide bombers on the West Bank, harboring of terrorist killers from the first World Trade Center attack and other operations, attempts to kill George H.W. Bush, violations of no-fly-zones and 1991 accords, etc.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    They were passed with sizable Democratic support\u2014with stirring speeches from Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. Biden later suggested a stable Iraq was perhaps the Obama administration\u2019s \u201cgreatest achievement,\u201d a characterization echoed by Obama when he prematurely pulled out peace-keepers from a stable Iraq in late 2011\u2014ensuring the chaos that followed.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Your angry letter is a calcified relic of 2006-7 and the hysteria of the Michael Moore\/Cindy Sheehan era. In the words of progressives\u2014time to Move On.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Have a nice day,<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Victor Hanson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    From An Angry Reader: To: Prof. Victor Davis Hanson \u00a0 At the end of your interview with Scott Simon on 8 July 2017 I heard this: \u201cAnd look how they took a good man like George Bush and turned him into a monster\u201d. It caught my attention. \u00a0 One of the few things I agree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2IS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9769,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-no-revelation-that-intelligence-agencies-are-politicized\/","url_meta":{"origin":10470,"position":0},"title":"It\u2019s No Revelation That Intelligence Agencies Are Politicized","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Trump is acknowledging a fact that recent history has repeatedly demonstrated. Furor has arisen over President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s charges that our intelligence agencies are politicized. Spare us the outrage. For decades, directors of intelligence agencies have often quite inappropriately massaged their assessments to fit\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9165,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-buck-never-stops-here\/","url_meta":{"origin":10470,"position":1},"title":"The Buck Never Stops Here","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services In a cover story in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine, President Obama offers astonishing scapegoating for his own foreign policy disasters.According to Obama, the deterioration of the ISIS wasteland that is now Libya was not due to improvident administration bombing followed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":543,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iraqi-irony\/","url_meta":{"origin":10470,"position":2},"title":"Iraqi Irony","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists. There are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iraq"","block_context":{"text":"Iraq","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iraq\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9884,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9884-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":10470,"position":3},"title":"02\/21\/17 From an Angry Reader:\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"02\/21\/17 From an Angry Reader: Victor David Hanson\u2019s latest rant, \u201cObama\u00a0left the president with monstrous mess (2\/17),\u201d is in its unmitigated slam at our\u00a0\u201clast president\u201d\u00a0not the least bit surprising, both in its orientation as well as in its patent bias.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0While it\u2019s a fool\u2019s errand to try to defend much of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9663,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trumps-russia-reset\/","url_meta":{"origin":10470,"position":4},"title":"Trump’s Russia “Reset”?","author":"Megan Ring","date":"December 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ Defining Ideas \u00a0 Throughout the 2016 election, the American Left venomously attacked Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. He was rightly accused of diminishing freedom both inside Russia and within neighboring nations, of gobbling up Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, and of eyeing the NATO member Baltic states for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7942,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-biggest-lie\/","url_meta":{"origin":10470,"position":5},"title":"The Biggest Lie","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Left would rather forget its old slogan, \u201cBush lied, thousands died.\u201d by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The very mention of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)\u00a0and Iraq was toxic for Republicans by 2005. They wanted to forget about the supposed absence of recently manufactured WMD in great\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"President George W. Bush at the White House, February 2005 (Alex Wong\/Getty Images)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/pic_giant_102114_SM_George-W-Bush-G-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10471,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10470\/revisions\/10471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}