COLUMN LEFT / RUTH ROSEN : The Character Question Aims at George Bush : The Gulf War killed thousands. Now the policy that led to it must be examined.

George Bush has a character problem: He finds it hard to tell the truth. “Iraqgate,” as some Democrats have dubbed the Bush Administration’s deceptive and dubious pre-war policy toward Iraq, may emerge as one of the most serious moral violations of the nation’s trust.

The question is not whether the Reagan and Bush administrations “tilted toward Iraq” during the 1980s; that much was known. The unsolved mystery is whether the United States may actually have helped Saddam Hussein rebuild his military machine after the Iran-Iraq war, violated the law in doing so and covered up this shoddy episode in appeasement.

Flashing their cynicism, pundits on the left and right have dismissed America’s failed policy toward Iraq as much ado about nothing. But mobilizing a nation for war and sending soldiers into combat is one of the most serious decisions a President can make. The Gulf War killed tens of thousands of people. Why it started and who is responsible are questions that must be answered in a democratic society.

For many Americans, the war was the brightest moment in the nation’s recent history. It was the glorious hour when Americans proved that they had the “right stuff,” when a publicly supported institution--the military--actually worked, and when George Bush’s whiny and shrill voice turned deep and confident.

I opposed the war, but I feel great compassion for the folks who trusted their government, sent their loved ones off to combat and wrapped their trees and towns in yellow ribbons. What if these same Americans now discover that much of what they “knew” about the Gulf War was wildly exaggerated or an outright lie?

The whole story has not been told. Rather, it is dribbling out. There is, of course, the selling of the war to the American people. Everyone knew that it was about oil, but Bush claimed that it was about stopping aggression. He produced a young Kuwaiti woman as an eyewitness to Hussein’s atrocities. (Turned out she was the ambassador’s daughter, safely ensconced in Washington.) Bush warned that Iraq could build an atomic bomb within six months. But experts who recently examined material wrestled from Hussein have concluded that an Iraqi bomb was three or more years away. Bush promised jobs, and when that proved ridiculous, he trotted out patriotism, and made support of the war a litmus test of national loyalty.

Once the war began, Bush’s popularity skyrocketed and comments about wimpiness disappeared. No sooner had the parades ended, however, than we learned that most of the brilliant Patriot missile flashes streaking across the night sky did not explode Scud warheads at all. Most of the bombs turned out to have missed their targets. Revelations of hypocrisy began to erode public pride. Aggression will not stand, Bush said, but he did nothing to prevent the massacre of the Kurds. Human rights are at stake, Bush claimed, ignoring the violation of Palestinians’ civil rights by the Kuwaitis, as well as their broken pledge to expand democratic rule.

Now, grave allegations come from Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Banking Committee. He has conducted a two-year investigation into whether the Bush Administration’s secret buildup of the Iraq military violated any U.S. laws, specifically conspiracy, cover-up and obstruction of justice.

Between 1983 and 1990, the U.S. Agriculture Department guaranteed Iraq $5 billion in loans, despite intelligence reports suggesting that Saddam Hussein was exchanging credit for weapons. The program continued well into spring of 1990, just months before the war. Did Commerce Department officials alter records to disguise military-related exports? Did the sale of militarily useful U.S. technology to Iraq make Hussein a likely and more formidable enemy? What was the relationship between the Bush Administration and Banco Nazionale del Lavoro in Atlanta, whose financial skulduggery bankrolled Hussein’s military buildup? If there was a cover-up, who is responsible?

These are not trivial questions; the gathering pressure for a special prosecutor is warranted.

Bush is the man who claimed that Clarence Thomas was the best-qualified man for the Supreme Court. He insists that he is the environmental President but has sabotaged the Earth Summit. He calls himself the educational President but delivers nothing. This is the politician who espouses “family values” but wrecks countless families through unemployment. If George Bush’s greatest moment of leadership was Operation Desert Storm, then it is he whose character as a public man must be questioned.