DOES KARL ROVE MAKE UNFORCED ERRORS?

The left and the media (hmm . . .) are having a field day trying to make political hay out of the charge that President Bush lied in his State of the Union message. The sentence in question has been parsed to death on the left and the right, and I'm not going to join in. But there is one mystery here. Why did the administration "admit" that the President shouldn't have said what he said, and why now.

Administrations usually hang on to possible, though implausible, explanations of how their various statements were true, or at least unfalsifiable, long after everyone else has moved on. This administration, on the other hand, has disavowed a statement that the British still defend and which, even if mistaken at its core, is by no means obviously a lie. Why?

And, even if we believed in the uninteresting explanation of reckless honesty, why now. Nothing and no one outside the administration forced its hand. Did they think that the story would be lost in the summer doldrums? Usually that's August and, in any event, the slow news environment makes this story stand out even more. Did they think that, with the President in Africa, the media would avoid criticism? I find it hard to believe that anyone in this administration ever expects to receive respectful treatment from the mainstream media. Did they think it's best to get this overwith now, and have it be old news by the time of the Presidential debates next year? This is most likely.

There is, however, a more Machiavellian possibility. I don't believe that the administration has bin Laden, or Saddam, or their wmds stashed away somewhere ready to be produced when the Democrats uncork a particularly potent bottle of bile. But in this case, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the administration has some subtle plan. The Democrats certainly have been lured out onto a limb; it might be just as solid as they think, but it might also provide an excuse for the British, or even the French, to release their proof, leaving the Democrats, once again, to do their Wile E. Coyote impersonation.

MORE:U.S., N. Korea Drifting Toward War, Perry Warns. Former Defense Secretary Says Standoff Increases Risk of Terrorists Obtaining Nuclear Device (Thomas E. Ricks and Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, 7/15/03)

Former defense secretary William Perry warned that the United States and North Korea are drifting toward war, perhaps as early as this year, in an increasingly dangerous standoff that also could result in terrorists being able to purchase a North Korean nuclear device and plant it in a U.S. city.

"I think we are losing control" of the situation, said Perry, who believes North Korea soon will have enough nuclear warheads to begin exploding them in tests and exporting them to terrorists and other U.S. adversaries. "The nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities," he said in an interview.

By pumping up the importance of the Nigerian uranium sentence, have the Democrats implicitly conceded that a rogue nuclear program is a legitimate grounds for war, if reliably established? Was this reaction sufficiently predictable for us to infer that this was the administration's plan? Posted by David Cohen at July 15, 2003 7:48 PM