Bush's "Kay Gambit"

[gulliver]

Here's my analysis of Bush's Kay play for what it's worth.

Here is the problem for Bush. There are apparently no WMDs in Iraq. Iraq had no chem/bios, and was years away from nuclear. Bush, Cheney, and other Bushie "geopolitical masterminds" ignored evidence that Saddam was likely not a threat and sold a war on false pretenses. Some would consider that impeachable. Unpersuasive and superfically good reasons for war were hidden; persuasive but dubious and erroneous reasons for war were trumpeted. One way or the other, Bush gets thrown out of office in 2004 once it sinks in that he sold America a major lemon.

The Kay Gambit.

Bush has to have inspectors in Iraq looking for WMDs for many reasons, some good for the country, others good only for Bush. Some documents have turned up, and that's apparently the whole kit and kaboodle. Therefore, the documents have to become the material basis of the Bushie gambit. (A few more potential WMD sites may turn up, but the odds are against finding anything there.)

So Bush must build his case on (and therefore must build up) both Kay and his report. In fact, Bush already did so at this last press conference. Bush has made and will continue to make a star out of the no-name Kay and try to revise the whole case for war to one based on "weapons programs" instead of a real threat. It is a cynical publicity effort on top of a desperate switcheroo. I don't think Bush has the skates to turn this triple-axle, and I don't think Rove thinks so either.

They won't be able to sell the idea that the actual WMDs went to Syria -- not if the report comes out months from now. If Kay had solid reasons to think the WMDs were moved to Syria, the Bushies would be screaming bloody murder right now. They would have no choice, either as brass-balled politicians (which they are) or as responsible leaders (which they aren't).

So part of the purpose of the "Kay Gambit" is to bluff the opposition and the media into going soft on criticizing the Bush team's perfidies in the short run. It's a move to buy time, IMO. They have no cards, so they are simply making a few and hoping to stay in the hand. (It's the whole game to them probably.)

If the bluff part of the gambit pays off, the Bushies are halfway home. If the press and opposition allow the debate to be reframed to one of "weapons programs" instead of actual weapons, to Saddam's mysterious, "inexplicable" threat instead of an actual imminent threat to U.S. vital interests, then the Bushies can still win. By the time the Kay report comes out, the universe of discourse has to be Saddam's intentions and inherent evil. The story will have to be about the Bushies not being the only ones to think Saddam was "packing." It will have to be about how puzzled everyone is that Saddam would act like he was armed when he wasn't.

But I don't think that dog will hunt, especially if we don't let it. The lack of an al Qaeda connection to Iraq is starting to get the play it deserves already. Then the fact that the Bushies delayed the release of the 9/11 report until after they took us to war will come out. And finally, the "28-pages" implicating the Saudis will show the American people how little they knew about the Bushies's shameful "geopolitical chess genius" drive to divert national security attention to Iraq, a country which appears not to have been a serious threat.

(Please feel free to take this apart or reinforce it. I'm just curious to what degree anyone else thinks this is actually what is going on.)

[SpiralHawk]

1. it's a plausible scenario, Gully

You could be right. Thanks for setting your ideas out.


"The Sacred anwers to no dogma." -- Kathelin Gray

[papau]

2. That is the way I read it - very effective on DLC and GOP in Congress

not to mention the media that always reads the Rove fax as news, week after week.

[Composed Thinker]

3. I think there's something in Iraq

The problem, it seems, is that we don't know where it is or what could have happened to it. And then there's the growing idea that the threat was overstated.

One has to wonder, though, how valid these claims by Kay are. To come out and make something up or exaggerate it now would be odd, since a fair number of people are focused on questions of WMD.

[gulliver]

4. I don't think they are overstating now.

They are essentially revising history. When Kay says there will be "surprises," he doesn't mean they will discover surprisingly more than the tons of chem/bios and "reconstituted nuclear program" Bush and Cheney said absolutely existed. The new definition of surprise is that Saddam hid plan and process documents on weapons programs from inspectors.

Think back before the war and ask if that definition of surprise squares with the picture the Bushies painted. The surprise is really how different the truth is from what Bush said in the State of the Union and so many other speeches. The Bushies have a lot of explaining to do, and their explanation keeps changing.

For example, Bush has yet to say that he was unaware that the SOTU Niger reference was known to be highly dubious before he included it in his speech. Cheney has not denied "awareness of dubiousness" either. Only Rice has, and she is being raked over the coals for it -- justifiably.

[ewagner]

5. Kay's interesting wrinkle

Kay made a few statements that seemed to indicate that these PLAN to hide WMDs and reconstitute them at some later date is evidence that Iraq committed the unpardonable sin of disobeying United Nations Resolution 1441 and therefore needed to be attacked.

It's a double whamy for Bush: justifying the war on the basis of Programs (as stated very well by others in this thread) and using the UN as a reason for ignoring the UN. Cute heh?

[Walt Starr]

6. This could be why the DLC is playing a "Lieberman Gambit"

Dean and Kucinich are going to be against the Iraq War no matter what. The DLC recognizes that to hedge the bets of the Democratic Party, it must field anti-war candidates in the primaries. For the DLC part, I believe they prefer Dean to Kucinich.

Graham is positioned to go either way, but only barely to the pro-war side of the debate based upon his speech on the floor of the Senate before the war vote.

Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt are all positioned to go either way on the war issue and all are very wishy-washy-any-way-the-wind-blows candidates. They are also DLC favorite sons.

Lieberman is the most favorite of the DLC favorite sons and is firmly positioned in the pro-war camp. He can never appeal to the anti-war side of the debate.

IMO the DLC believes there are WMDs in Iraq and Lieberman will end up being the annointed one, but they have all bets hedged at this point.

Now I am going to say something about the other two candidates that most will not like, but I think it is the truth. Braun and Sharpton are token candidates to the DLC. Sharpton could siphon to many African-American votes and harm the rest of the field, so Braun is in the race to stay. The DLC does not expect anything out of either of them. This is solely my opinion and does not reflect on the worthiness of these two candidates whatsoever. I would love to see Braun return to a Senate run in Illinois, though.