Jeff Koopersmith

The Milli Vanilli of Pennsylvania Avenue
The new definition of phony: George W. Bush and Tony Blair
By Jeff Koopersmith

July 18, 2003 -- NEW YORK (apj.us) -- Many of you will remember Milli Vanilli, the "twin" pop music sensations who garnered two Grammy Awards for their runaway hits years ago.

The only problem was that they were lip-synching the songs that sold 7 million albums that year and, in the end, had to hand those statuettes back.

Now we find President Bush and Tony Blair lip synching each other -- or is it Vice President Dick Cheney and his cabal of back room puppeteers who they parrot in frightened defiance?

As a patriot, I would like to believe that even this president has been victimized, rather than believing the worst but most logical option: that he is cooperating fully in the latest and poorest attempt at covering his Administration's erroneous tracks upon which the foundation of our invasion and occupation of Iraq was based.

What is the death count today? Some estimate the Iraqi civilian death toll at between six and eight thousand thus far. Yet George W. Bush knows that the only count to watch is the American death tally, which appears to be increasing, one or two boys or girls a day, since the President declared an end to hostilities, only to be challenged by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who told the press that we are still at war.

Who could argue?

I listened to Tony Blair address a joint session of Congress yesterday afternoon, prior to his White House visit. It was stunningly creepy.

He offered a new number at the White House later -- Saddam had "murdered" 300,000 people -- and "this was reason enough to invade" was the message.

Was this a new defense for indefensible cheek?

Here was near-sycophant Blair chortling the concept of freedom through war and setting the stage for what seems to be the agreed upon eventual message: "There weren't any weapons of mass destruction, but so what? Saddam was a tyrant." Blair received countless standing ovations and one might have thought one was witnessing a US annexation of Britain since the drivel was flying so fast and so furious.

When will Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush appreciate that Americans and the British are not focused primarily on the lies, or half-truths, or even the proven facts that laid the foundation for the war in Iraq?

When we will see that the anger -- now rising even from the very bowels of the intelligence communities on both sides of the Atlantic -- rise from the questioning the necessity to sacrifice even one of our young soldiers, let alone hundreds -- this year, right now, today.

Whatever the final case, it is clear now that there was no imminent threat to the United States of America or Great Britain, and that other courses were open to crush Saddam Hussein -- including assassination, kidnap, coup, or tactical assault.

Yesterday I spent much of the morning simply thumbing through the photographs of the boys and girls who have died in Iraq over the past few months. I looked at one hundred and seventy one of their pictures, and read the short descriptions of how they had suffered and where they were from.

I keep those pictures on the hard drive of my computer -- lest I forget the true price we are paying as a society.

I thought about Vietnam and what it would be like to view 58,000 such photographs and dossiers.

Some were shot in combat. Others were blown up by hidden bombs or unexploded ordinance. Others still were killed by friendly fire or simple car and truck crashes in the melee that is war.

I thought about the two hundred pairs of parents mourning their loss, the wives who would never again embrace their fallen husbands, the children who would never know their fathers, the friends who would miss each dead soldier at Christmas this year.

This afternoon I watched the leaders, Blair, and Bush, rush to each other's sides -- their plans splintered, shoring up each other's story like a set of two by fours propping a rotting wooden beam.

It was all too easy to see the two worrying about their political futures.

I wondered what their joint press conference would look like if the pictures of these dead soldiers were scrolling under their images as they waxed insolent to the searching questions of the press.

I watched Vice President Cheney, perched above Mr. Blair in the House of Representatives, looking smug and self-congratulatory-assured, nodding at the Prime Minster's hogwash, even as Blair offered line after line that struck me as the precursor, the groundwork, for a terrible truth.

The translation of his remarks: "So what? So what if there were no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear threat, no chemical or biological weapons? We know what's best. It's all too confusing for you ordinary people to understand. Trust us."

I watched the ever-expanding and almost-always-silent Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, and wondered if his progressive weight gain was from tension, from fear, or anxiety at having to preside over a body seemingly consumed with ravenousness.

And I wondered about the families of these boys and girls now lying in honored graves as they sat in living rooms across the nation in their easy chairs and sofas watching Blair and Bush. Were they fretful, a little uncomfortable -- pulled from the left and the right, considering the unbelievable -- that their babies did not have to die this year, not in Iraq?

Perhaps not. It is too much to ask those who loved someone to entertain the idea that he or she may have died for discourteous reason.

I have heard the defenders.

They snap back at the press.

"Are you suggesting that the President of the United States knowingly lied to the American people?"

I ask, "Would it be the first time?"

This is their weapon: they use our own patriotism, our pride in our country and that which it stands for, against us. How dare we suspect we've been lied to?

Mr. Bush was not pleased that Mr. Blair opened the door he was apparently instructed to unlock -- that the foundation for the Iraq war might have been a well-intended (or not) deception. He was quick, this President, in our White House, to tell us that he believed we would eventually find that all he told us was true.

He knew it in his heart.

What President Bush does not see is that it is too late.

Whether he finds these weapons, or plants them as some say he will, or never finds them at all, his legacy is ruined, his credibility destroyed.

We never believed him in the first instance.

Ninety nine percent of the leaders of the world didn't believe him either.

We knew what he was up to. Our fear forced us to turn our doubts aside.

If President Bush lied, we enabled him to lie. We have only ourselves to blame.

Yet, the question remains, "With the out-and-out smorgasbord of rotten dictatorships on this earth to choose from, tell us why Iraq, and why today?"

There is no respectable, honest, or good answer.

JEFF KOOPERSMITH is a political consultant, opinion research authority, policy analyst, and self-described "renegade lobbyist."