perfidy

Dan Drezner has linked to an interesting discussion about the WMD/16-words debate. Drezner himself operates along Buckethead's lines, and has very kindly collected responses to his views. Kieiran Healy of Crooked Timber agrees with me in maintaining that in and of itself, the question of who let the African Uranium thingy into the State of the Union Address isn't that important. Rather,

The substance of the President's case for war is what matters, and it had everything to do with "the WMD issue." If that case was built on a series of lies - immediate threat, 45-minutes to deployment, uranium from Niger and all the rest of it - then that is something to get exercised about.

That pretty much fits with what I've been saying, and predictably many conservatives differ.

John Cole argues that there were four main arguments for going to war with Iraq: The Weapons of Mass Destruction; Iraq's being in material breach of UN resolutions; the humanitarian mission; and terrorist ties. Since the missing Uranium was only part of one of the reasons, it is insignificant.

I disagree with the importance and even accuracy of these arguments, as detailed elsewhere. What really sticks in my craw is this: the overwhelming message coming from Bush in early '03 was not one of humanitarian missions (otherwise we'd be libervading half the countries in the world). Nor was it Iraq's terrorist ties, which didn't get a whole lot of speech-time (I at least was never convinced, and believe me, I wanted to be). The argument that we were merely upholding the UN's own good name and reputation sort of fell through when the UN curled up and wept back in February. What is left? Weapons of Mass Destruction and Saddam Hussein's will to use them.

Interestingly, in the same discussion linked to by Dan Drezner, James Joyner helps me make my case. He attempts to minimize the Uranium scandal by reprinting the entire section of the State of the Union where the "16 words" originally appeared, and pointing out that Weapons of Mass Destruction in general were the front and center reason for going to war.

Interesting. Granted, these people are minipundits like me (albeit smarter and better established), and not "news" sources. But the fact that there exists such a large range of opinions on just why it was we went into Iraq to begin with suggests to me that there was no one clear reason, just a lot of muddled talk and mangled statistics.

Once again. I am delighted Saddam Hussein is gone. I am delighted that the humanitarian side-effects of our libervasion of Iraq will soon make that country a better place to live. But at the end of the day, the Weapons of Mass Destruction-- the fear of death raining from the sky or sneaking into Boston Harbor on a zodiac at 3 AM-- and the connected matter of Iraq's UN-noncompliance, were the main stated reasons for going to war. A thousand pundits spinning isn't going to change that, and all the chattering is starting to piss me off.

The chattering class can't seem to agree on anything, least of all why we libervaded Iraq. Some say WMD's. Some say a NeoCon plot. Many say that whatever it was, it was right. And need I mention that terrorism isn't in the top three topics of discussion on Iraq? In a perfect world we would have rolled into Baghdad and found terrorists and cans of Sarin cowering in the light like a teeming family of rats when you turn over a piece of plywood in downtown Baltimore. That we didn't begs some incredibly important questions, like "where are all the damn terrorists?" and "where the hell is all the goddamn anthrax?" I'm not interested in any more dog and pony shows or rhetorical magic. Where the hell did the anthrax go? And whose head is going to roll for losing track of it?

[moreover] Buckethead, I have heard your theory that Iraq is to be used as a wedge to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East. It's a nice theory, but I don't believe it. We don't have nearly enough troops to pull it off, and, last I checked, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were still allies of a sort.

[moreover] This is not my most finely crafted argument. Perhaps when I have some time I will sharpen it. In the meantime, feel free to get out your long knives.