Yes, it's time again for one of our "Parallel History" episodes, going back 5 years to this day in 2003, when the US was $1,200,000,000,000 ($1.2 trillion: I think I have my zeros right) richer, and not yet mired between the Tigris and the Euphrates.
SOTU or "State of The Union" 2003 was also delivered on January 28. Here is what bears recalling from President Bush's second SOTU speech:
- Saddam Hussein is mentioned 19 times; Osama Bin Laden not once
- "Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax — enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it." [Question: whatever became of the investigation into the anthrax scare in the US of fall 2001?]
- There are lots more scary statistics: "38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent; 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents." [Question: while we know now that these weapons were either destroyed by Saddam or had ceased to function, guess what weapons continue to cause death and destruction to US forces and Iraqi civilians alike? Answer: plain old high explosives, left unguarded in the aftermath of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's headlong rush to Baghdad.]
- The President who made "waterboarding" a household term was exercised by Saddam's brutal practices: "The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages — leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained — by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning." [But Saddam was using all of these barbaric methods when Ronald Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld as a goodwill messenger, when Saddam was the enemy of our enemy, Iran.]
- "The United States will ask the U.N. Security Council to convene on February the 5th to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraqi's legal — Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempt to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups." [Stay tuned for another chapter of Parallel History on February 5.]
- "Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know — we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America." [Question: is it blasphemy when you invoke God's name five times in a speech presaging war on false pretences?]
Just to show that SOTU wasn't all about Iraq, you'll be happy to know that the President also had good domestic news:
- "To bring our economy out of recession, we delivered the largest tax relief in a generation." [five years later, what will the President say tonight about how his leadership has landed the US not only in another recession, but in a massive nationwide loss of housing values, the fall of the dollar as a world reserve currency, and a worldwide stock panic?]
- "Our second goal is high quality, affordable health care for all Americans. The American system of medicine is a model of skill and innovation, with a pace of discovery that is adding good years to our lives. Yet for many people, medical care costs too much — and many have no coverage at all. ...We must work toward a system in which all Americans have a good insurance policy, choose their own doctors, and seniors and low-income Americans receive the help they need." [Just watch Michael Moore's "SiCKO" for a look at how well George W. Bush has handled this one.]
- "I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70-percent cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years. I have sent you a Healthy Forests Initiative, to help prevent the catastrophic fires that devastate communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of acres of treasured forest. I'm proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free. Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy." (emphasis added) ["Clear Skies" - an exercise in Orwellian black-is-white terminology if there ever was one - and other tree-hugging mimicry from the Administration that made the United States much more dependent on foreign sources of energy, and stood in the way of world consensus on countering climate change.]
- "Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country — the homeless and the fatherless, the addicted — the need is great. Yet there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people. Americans are doing the work of compassion every day — visiting prisoners, providing shelter for battered women, bringing companionship to lonely seniors. These good works deserve our praise; they deserve our personal support; and when appropriate, they deserve the assistance of the federal government. I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act, to encourage acts of compassion that can transform America, one heart and one soul at a time." [Remember, this was said two years before Bush utterly failed his "compassion" test in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.]
Sorry to burden readers with old SOTU when tonight you can listen to brand new SOTU. By the way, all SOTUs, dating back to George Washington's, are available at Infoplease. For Washington readers who want a serious after-action report on tonight's SOTU, the Brookings Institution has a roundup Tuesday morning.