Bush playing his cards right in Iraq
July 27, 2003
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn...t-steyn27.html

Timing is everything. On Tuesday--that would be Qusai Odai Tuesday--
Dick Gephardt made a speech in San Francisco and gave us the benefit of
his take on Bush's war: ''He chose the wrong backdrop for his photo-
op,'' declared the Democratic presidential candidate. ''If you ask me,
if he really wanted to show us the state of affairs in Iraq, he should
have landed on a patch of quicksand--This looming quagmire is on our
shoulders alone.''

''There's A Quagmire Round My Shoulder''? Wasn't that Al Jolson
accompanied by Ukulele Ike in Hollywood Parade Of 1929? But no, the
Democrats' downbeat chin-up song is all their own work, and they're
determined to make it their every-hour-on-the-hour theme tune for
Campaign 2004.

Technically speaking, can a quagmire be on your shoulders? Isn't it
usually at your feet, so you can sink into it? And, if the quagmire
really appears to be looming at your shoulders, might that not be
because you're looking at the world upside down?

Not to worry. There are plenty of other folks standing on their heads
along with 'em. At the BBC, they're fending off so much Pentagon spin
the quote key on the Beeb's typewriter seems to have jammed. Here's how
the BBC Web site reported Tuesday's exciting news:

"Saddam sons 'dead' "

"Iraq 'deaths' will have huge effect"

"U.S. celebrates 'good' Iraq news"

The ''BBC'' is currently locked in a battle with Tony ''Blair,'' over
whether ''or'' not the British government ''sexed up'' its pre-war
intelligence reports. It's heartening to see that the Beeb is doing
such a sterling job of sexing down any good news from Iraq.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the CBC's main national news found time to give
its viewers just one ''typical'' reaction from an ordinary Iraqi to the
demise of Saddam's kids. This lone representative of public opinion was
outraged at the vicious cruelty meted out to two respectable upstanding
mass-murdering torturing psychopath rapists. The CBC had to get its
microphone pretty close in to its sole man in the street in order to
hear him above all the cheers and celebratory volleys from his fellow
Iraqis.

But if he's out of step with his Baghdad neighbors he's on the same
page as Howard Dean. The leading Democratic presidential candidate,
having declined in April to regard the fall of Saddam as a good thing,
was even less impressed by the dispatch of Saddam's progeny: ''The ends
do not justify the means,'' he sniffed.

Who's the odd one out here? The BBC, CBC and most of the European media
have constructed an alternative universe and are content to frolic on
its wilder shores. Time stands still in this world: Even though the
confidently predicted civilian death tolls and humanitarian
catastrophes never arrive, nobody minds. There's no reason why reality
should ever intrude.

Unfortunately, Dean, Gephardt and about half the other Democratic
candidates still live in the real world--or, more to the point, their
would-be constituents do. These candidates are obliged to be, in Bill
Clinton's words, ''politically viable.'' At the BBC and Le Monde and
the Sydney Morning Herald, anti-Americanism is the New Universal
Theory: It explains everything; it's the prism through which every
event is viewed. But it's an unlikely strategy for American
electioneering. One anti-Bush Democrat at a protest the other day
carried a sign reading ''FRANCE WAS RIGHT!'' That's not a winning
slogan, even in Vermont.

What happened this week is a foretaste of what the party can expect in
the next 15 months: Reality will keep intruding, and if the Dems keep
moving the goalposts ever more frantically, pretty soon they'll be
campaigning from Planet Zongo. This week, Tom Daschle insisted that
Odai and Qusai were all very well, but where was the Big Guy? Why
hadn't that slacker Bush caught him yet?

Well, yes, Saddam's gone the Osama route, releasing audio cassettes
every couple of weeks. Why is that? These days, a compact camcorder's
as easy to smuggle in as a Walkman, and video would have far more
impact. Could it be that Saddam isn't in such great shape for the
cameras? Not quite ready for his close-up? Wherever he is, he's
dependent on a dwindling band of aides and, after the way his sons were
sold out, he's gonna be a bit twitchy if Ahmed's trip to the 7-Eleven
seems to be taking a little too long.

So suppose there's another firefight and they pull his mustache from
the rubble? What's Tom Daschle going to say then? Right now, of the 55
faces on the Iraq's Most Wanted playing cards, the Americans have
killed or captured 37. Democrats, by contrast, have yoked their fate to
bad news. So they need to ask themselves, realistically, how much is
likely to show up. Will significant numbers of Iraqi moppets die from
cholera? No. Will the Kurds secede, thereby provoking Turkish
intervention? No. Will Iranian-backed Islamists seize Iran? No. Will
small numbers of Iraqi moppets die from cholera? No. OK, very very
small numbers? Not enough.

On the other hand, will the Niger uranium story be proved true? Quite
possibly, but who cares? Will Saddam be tracked down as his sons were?
Very possibly. Will the military nab another 10 playing card dudes?
That's almost certain. You got to know when to fold. This week, Bush's
two aces beat the Dems' Niger joker. That's the way it's always going
to go.

Bill Clinton got it right. Democrats need to move on. If they're still
droning on about Niger on the day Rummy's passing out souvenir vials of
Saddam's DNA, they'll be heading for oblivion. Clinton's approach is
all the more lethal because it doesn't seem so: You can't beat Bush on
the war, so you neutralize his advantage on the issue by taking it out
of contention. You'll appear sympathetic, generous, bipartisan, and
mature; the war will be bored off the front pages; and you can fight
the election on more favorable terrain on which the public's never
really cared for Bush. Whether or not the Clinton tack would work, the
Dean-Chomsky-BBC-French strategy never will. When the last Baghdad
supporter of Odai and Qusai sounds like Howard Dean's running mate, you
know you're off the map.