In a strange moment of candor, Wolfowitz tells Vanity Fair that the WMD argument for overthrowing Saddam was chosen “for bureaucratic reasons,” since “it was the one reason everyone could agree on.” (He also lends credence to the argument advanced in this Fred Kaplan article that removing troops from Saudi Arabia was one of the central purposes of the Iraq war.) Meanwhile, in the same AP story, the head of US Marines in Iraq says of the WMDs, “they’re simply not there.” Looks like the Bushies have some explaining to do…If they follow the usual pattern, I suspect they’ll answer any tough question with a flurry of 9/11-esque horror stories.
Category: Weaponsgate
Here We Go Again.
Second verse, same as the first. With the war in Iraq coming to a close, Dubya’s hawks start turning up the heat on Syria. “I think that we believe there are chemical weapons in Syria,” Bush said yesterday. Boy, that rationale never gets old, does it? Even with India now latching onto Dubya’s “preemption” to justify possibly bombing Pakistan back into the Stone Age, the Bushies don’t even make an attempt to forge a casus belli more in tune with international diplomatic precedent. Let’s just hope China also doesn’t decide to “preempt” terrorism in Taiwan anytime soon. (Second link via Follow Me Here.) Update: Bush and Blair try to kill the Syria war hype, for now.
How did it come to this?
Well, that’s that, then. Thanks to the not-insubstantial blunders of Dubya’s crack diplomatic team, it looks like we’ll be going to war WITHOUT UN approval. True, I’ve always approached this venture in Iraq with a good deal of skepticism, particularly after its success in sucking all the news out of the room during the summer of Enron. And I was disgusted by the capitulation of Congress last fall in washing their hands of the matter and ceding their constitutionally-mandated authority to declare war over to Dubya. But I still think I could have been sold on the necessity of this conflict if a clear case had ever been made by the Bushies. And, frankly, that case has not been made. Instead we’ve gotten a series of half-truths and rhetorical flourishes attempting to conflate Iraq and Al Qaeda in the American mind, despite the fact that the two despise each other (Saddam is a secular despot while Bin Laden is a fundamentalist freakshow.) And whatsmore, Dubya has now managed in two short years to squander virtually all of America’s once-considerable reservoir of international goodwill in order to prosecute a war for which the rationale still remains blurry.
The Pentagon tells us that we will win a war against Iraq with minimal difficulty, and I think they’re probably right (although obviously there are a number of Saddam-unleashing-WMD-upon-troops and/or Israel scenarios that are almost too horrifying to contemplate.) But I hold very little optimism for our handling of the post-war world — when much of the international community considers us a rogue nation and the Middle East suspects us of imperialistic intentions — given that our actions up to this point only prove that it’s currently Amateur Hour in the White House and State Department.
He’s No Adlai.
Well, unfortunately I was in a class during Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN yesterday, so I can’t really attest to its effectiveness, although Saletan’s scorecard seems to suggest some minds were changed at the Security Council. (And the Guernica coverup, via Quiddity, made for some biting commentary on the day.) At any rate, it seems war is inevitable at this point…I only hope it was worth ticking off most of the international community to get our way.