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# Posted 9:23 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

READY FOR ROUND TWO? The name of the game is "Name That Hawk." I give you a quote, you tell me who said it. Here goes:

1) "If I found in any way, shape or form that [Saddam Hussein] was developing weapons of mass destruction, I'd take 'em out."

The answer is George Bush. The quote is from a campaign speech given on December 2, 1999. The source of the quote is WashPost columnist George Will.
Will cites Bush's Dec. '99 speech to show that the President's focus on Iraq is nothing new. Will's article provides an interesting contrast to that of Stephen Hayes , which I talked about in my last post. Hayes sought to undermine Bush's Democratic critics by showing that they were hawkish on Iraq when Clinton was president. Neither Hayes nor Will recognizes that the United States' record of talking tough about Iraq but doing nothing about it has undermined American credibility on the Iraq issue. Bush's tough talk from Dec. '99 -- followed by a lack of action in the first eight months of his presidency -- shows that he is no better than Clinton on this issue.

But who is better? Glad you asked. The answer is, of course, Tony Blair. The British prime minister is the only hawk who recognizes that the real reason that the United States and its allies cannot tolerate the continuing existence of Saddam's regime is that ever since September 11th we have become aware of the need to preempt terror. As Blair said:

"Suppose I had come last year on the same day as this year -- Sept. 10. Suppose I had said to you: There is a terrorist network called al Qaeda. It operates out of Afghanistan. It has carried out several attacks and we believe it is planning more. It has been condemned by the U.N. in the strongest terms. Unless it is stopped, the threat will grow. And so I want to take action to prevent that. Your response and probably that of most people would have been very similar to the response of some of you yesterday on Iraq. There would have been few takers for dealing with it and probably none for taking military action of any description."

Thanks to George Will for that quote as well.

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