Phil Brennan
Monday, Oct. 6, 2003

The most recent Marist poll showed only 45 percent of New Yorkers approved of how President Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, while 52 percent turned thumbs down. The poll also showed that Bush's approval rating has slipped among New Yorkers to 44 percent from the 58 percent it was when the Iraq war started, according to Friday's New York Times.

Moreover, Pataki's pro-war speeches have come at the very time "when more and more New York National Guard troops are being deployed in Iraq," the Times notes, adding that only this week it was announced that 670 guardsmen from the 27th Light Infantry Brigade would be sent to Iraq , the first use of one of the state's infantry units in a war zone since World War II.

In the face of all this, the Times reports that Pataki "has emerged as one of President Bush's staunchest supporters on the war, defending it in speeches across the country as the continuation of a struggle against Islamic terrorists that began with the attacks in New York in 2001."

At a news conference in the Capitol Tuesday Pataki said "It's far better to be fighting that war against Al Qaeda terrorists with our soldiers and sailors and Marines and Air Force on the streets of Baghdad than with our firefighters and police officers on the streets of Brooklyn."

The Times notes that while President Bush has acknowledged that there was no concrete evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, Pataki has stuck closely to the same line the White House has followed: that after the Sept. 11 attacks, tearing down any regime that aids anti-American terrorism is justified.

'Clearly a Tie'

"I think there is clearly a tie between Iraq and terror," the governor said. "Saddam Hussein was one of the most evil, barbaric dictators who engaged in terror against his own people and was apparently even engaged in a plot to assassinate former President Bush, and there is no question that Al Qaeda operatives have been and are in Iraq."

Pataki also criticized Democrats for not backing the president when he spoke to the United Nations and sought aid in rebuilding Iraq and for suggesting that the president had misled the public in making the case to go to war against Saddam Hussein.

"Of course there is room for debate," the governor told a Conservative Party meeting Monday night. "But we've always had a policy that when we're engaged in a war that debate stops at our shores. And when we're talking to international groups and to other countries, we stand together as Americans and we're not Republicans and Democrats.

"And yet think about it. One of the Democratic candidates said that this is the wrong war at the wrong time, and the other Democratic candidate for president said that America should go to war not when America wants to go to war but when America has to go to war. Well, the firefighters who responded on Sept. 11 didn't want to go to war, they had to go to war, a war they didn't even know existed."

In his speeches Pataki has been saying how he was happy that, when the attacks occurred, America did not have a Democratic president who would have "wrung his hands" about what to do but a Republican president willing to announce a bold new military doctrine against all states that harbor terrorists.

"Thank God on Sept. 11 we had a president who understood we had to take the fight against those who would take away our freedoms to their turf, instead of letting them continue to attack us when they wanted to," he told the Conservative Party meeting.

And at a Republican governors' association meeting in Boston last week, Gov. Pataki praised President Bush for recognizing that "there were evil forces" and that it was necessary "to defend us from those forces, not on the streets of New York but on the streets of Baghdad."

Aides to Pataki told the Times 's that his stance on the war comes out of his deeply held personal beliefs "rooted in an aggressive view of America's role in the world, as well as the experience of treading through the rubble and the dead at the World Trade Center site, one of the most transformative experiences of his life.

"He has a very personal view of what happened here," a senior aide told the Times. "He witnessed it."

The governor explained his strong support for the war by saying : "I honestly believe it's something that transcends the normal political issues because it's a matter of life and death. It's a matter of the success of our way of life and the freedom of America."

Apparently unable to understand that kind of ingrained patriotism, or even to grasp the existence of such concepts as evil, the Times suggested that Pataki's open allegiance to the President is simply his way of currying favor in hopes of getting a big job in the next Bush administration. The governor, the Times added helpfully "has already emerged as one of the president's biggest fund-raisers."

The Times then quotes Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, whose polls show support for the president's policies slipping, as charging that Pataki is following a political strategy aimed at pleasing the White House, rather than trying to please New Yorkers.

Despite the governor's repeated statements that he is in no way looking for a job in the Bush administration. Miringoff, who has no way of knowing what is in the Governor's mind said "What Governor Pataki is doing right now is keeping his options open for a possible appointment in a second Bush term."

And what the Times wants even more fervently is that there not be a second Bush administration.

Editor's note:
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