Tim Russert interviewed Bob Graham on Sunday:
MR. RUSSERT: The director of the CIA has said it was a mistake to include words in the president’s State of the Union message about uranium from Africa, and the president and his people have said it’s time to move on. Does that settle the issue?
SEN. GRAHAM: Tim, as I see it, this is not an issue of George Tenet. This is an issue of George Bush. And it’s not a singular incident. There’s been a pattern in this administration, beginning with the development of the energy policy in the first few weeks, running through environmental policy, economic policy, and now Iraq and the war on terror, in which the American people have not been let in to understand what is going on, what the basis of decisions will be, and we end up having to go through almost a grammar lesson of word-by-word assessment of what’s been said in order to understand what the leadership of this country is intending to communicate.
And Later. . .
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Graham, in October of 2002, you said, “Saddam Hussein’s regime has chemical and biological weapons and is trying to get nuclear capacity.” Do you still agree with that?
SEN. GRAHAM: I believed that at the time because that is exactly what we have been told by the intelligence agencies, that the United States government and I believed it as a citizen, as a member of Congress, as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. You have a right to believe that what’s being told to you by the highest levels of American intelligence is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Ah, so Bush and Graham get their information from the same place, but Graham is innocent of his conclusions, but Bush's mistake is a pattern of behavior. I suspect a pattern of behavior in Bob Graham. He's a quiet hard working Senator and Governor for most of his life, but now that he wants to be President he sees wrongdoing everywhere. If he had only been running when this exchange happened:
"I did not have sex with that woman (pause to remember her name) Miss Lewinsky." Bill Clinton 1998.
Maybe Bob could have found a pattern of behavior there. Clinton Lied to a grand jury, bombed Iraq to forestall impeachment and repeatedly proclaiming innocence up into the point he was caught and then changed gears and said that it was no one's business.
More Russert. . .
MR. RUSSERT: But Bill Clinton, as president in 1998 said, “Mark my words, Saddam will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them. He will use them.” What President Clinton misled?
SEN. GRAHAM: I don’t know the basis upon which he made that statement and that was in 1998. As you’ll recall, and as the questions that you just asked of Secretary Rumsfeld indicated, the reason for this war—particularly, this was not just a garden variety war; this was a pre-emptive war, because there was an imminent threat to the security of the United States of America. So it’s not just a matter of finding the history of weapons of mass destruction. It’s finding weapons of mass destruction which were capable of imminent use. The British even got it down to 45 minutes’ ability to utilize weapons of mass destruction. Were there weapons that were in that condition of readiness? That’s the question.
When a Democrat is President, Bob Graham didn't bother to find the basis for remarks that a rougue nation was developing WMD. For Bush to go to war he has to know if the weapons were in a condition of readiness. How can anyone know that without invading to find out? If Graham knows how to decifer the nuclear, biological and chemical capability of every nation on Earth solely by reading intelligence reports then he will be the greatest President in the history of the nation. Somehow Clinton's tough talk and inaction is laudable, but Bush's resolve is reckless.
Graham's problem is that he was head or ranking member of the Senate intelligence committee for years. He can't run for President as this outsider who wants to clean the mess up. His party was in the White House for 8 years and he couldn't persuade his President to do anything about these problems. Graham is either a poor communicator or he didn't care. Neither speaks well for his leadership skills.
Senator Graham is just another in a long line of wannabees that have no original ideas. They give speeches about how tax cuts are dangerous while promising yet more government giveaways. He just wants to be President. But Graham is in too important of a position to be playing politics. If he wants to be President he should resign his membership on the intelligence committee and let a serious senator take his place. That committee oversees the security of our lives. It doesn't need to be a bully pulpit for an opportunist.
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