Centerfield

Egg Facial Hardened To A Tempera Glaze

I don't normally link to NY Times editorials, but this is a fair and balanced assessment

This page did not support the war in Iraq, but it never quarreled with one of its basic premises. Like President Bush, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding potentially large quantities of chemical and biological weapons and aggressively pursuing nuclear arms. Like the president, we thought those weapons posed a grave danger to the United States and the rest of the world. Now it appears that premise was wrong. We cannot in hindsight blame the administration for its original conclusions. They were based on the best intelligence available, which had led the Clinton administration before it and the governments of allied nations to reach the same conclusion. But even the best intelligence can turn out to be mistaken, and the likelihood that this was the case in Iraq shows why pre-emptive war, the Bush administration's strategy since 9/11, is so ill conceived as a foundation for security policy. If intelligence and risk assessment are sketchy — and when are they not? — using them as the basis for pre-emptive war poses enormous dangers.

More and more, I'm noticing amnesia among many liberals, who are saying, now that no weapons of mass destruction have been found, that there never was any reason to suspect they existed, that the issue of the WMD's was contacted, based on lies, and a fraud. I'm glad the Times has reminded people that Democrats as well as Republicans believed the WMD's existed and were an issue of grave concern.

The Bush Administration made a spectacular misjudgement in premising their policy based on the existence of these weapons. They've got egg on their face that by now has hardened into a tempera glaze. Their unwillingness to acknowledge error has created a fertile medium for conspiracy theories. Their error and their lack of accountability has undermined my confidence in their ability to handle national security issues, which was the only area in which I ever presumed them to be competent.

Nonetheless, we have indeed liberated the Iraqi people. The cost of the Iraq War may well exceed its benefits, but no one should deny the benefit of replacing Saddam's regime with a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.

Those who advocate the immediate withdrawal of American troops should recognize that a Baath restoration would be accompanied by the mass murder of those who have cooperated with coalition forces, just as Saddam massacred those who rebelled against him in 1991 after then-President Bush's poorly thought out call for insurrection.

Posted by rickheller at September 25, 2003 09:35 PM