A Few Questions
Matt Welch asks whether it is contradictory to criticize Bush's unilateral actions in Iraq after praising Clinton's similar actions in Kosovo. (Via Instapundit, who emphasizes that the war in Kosovo is not over. Quagmire?)
Welch doesn't mention it, but I think Western Europe, and countries bordering it, still get special consideration (like it or not).
Human Rights Watch has said officially that the U.S. intervention in Iraq was not a human rights intervention because there was no mass killing underway or imminent. It was underway or imminent in Kosovo.
UPDATE: I guess I should have added: there seems to be a consensus that there is more of a risk if the mission in Iraq fails. (Of course Bush defenders would say: more to gain if it succeeds). I think Jonah Goldberg said recently (I can't find it) that the U.S. could pull out of Kosovo abruptly with very few repercussions, but the same is not true of Iraq. Other things being anywhere near equal, that is an argument against intervening in Iraq.
Christopher Hitchens wonders whether anti-war people who now criticize Bush for not taking out Osama earlier, would actually have been willing to support any of the means necessary to do so a year or two ago.
I guess the people who left one mess in Afghanistan in order to start up another one in Iraq have more of a problem here--since Osama is going to come back to haunt them in one way or another. Quite possibly the anti-war people have been wrong in being anti-war from the beginning. Possibly 9/11 proved that strong action was necessary somewhere, and Bush understood that. But then it is striking that Bush more or less pulled out of Afghanistan after some half-way measures; and immediately launched a bigger and messier war. This doesn't seem to be an example of seeing what needs to be done; it just seems to be one blunder piled on another.
Hitchens also highlights the discovery of actual WMDs that might have been in Iraq under Saddam. The first such discovery in the fourteen months of U.S. occupation. Rumsfeld says the one small find may not be sarin after all.
So maybe Iraq under Saddam didn't have absolutely no WMDs of any kind, anywhere. (If that were the case, probably Iraq in March 2003 was the only country of which that was true). Maybe Saddam instead had ... almost nothing.
Is this supposed to prove that the Bushies weren't either lying or clueless?
Joe Wilson apparently confirms in his book that there was in fact some kind of overture from Saddam to Niger, to inquire about uranium. I'm pretty sure no trace of any actual nuclear weapons has been found, anywhere in Iraq, nor facilities to make them. And who was Saddam's ambassador? Whom did he trust with this delicate mission that could conceivably alter strategic relationships all over the world?
Apparently, the crazy PR guy, Baghdad Bob or Comical Ali. (Instapundit linking to WP).
Is there any way this story could be more ridiculous? Maybe the Three Stooges came back from the dead to negotiate the final details of the deal, and Buster Keaton pumped a push car into a railway tunnel to pick up the merchandise.
Generally speaking, I gather, WMDs can be made in one's bathtub. If Saddam didn't have any (or if he had some miniscule amount of something), then he was the only thug in the world who didn't. Bizarre, but there you go. A "program"? Does that mean at least a few people are available who could actually do the necessary work in the bathtub?
Tim McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahama using fertilizer.
Since I'm in Canada, I should mention that the Prime Minister of Canada apparently thinks Saddam had lots of WMDs, and they've been dispersed to lots of places. He may be a complete fool.
Zarqawi actually spent some time in Baghdad before March 2003--he wasn't only in Kurdish territory. (See here as well as Hitchens). Doesn't that mean Saddam supported his work somehow? If people came from other countries to visit him in hospital, doesn't that mean there was an Al Qaeda cell in Iraq operating with Saddam's protection? Maybe, or maybe this is giving the most melodramatic interpretation possible to some pretty typical third-world stuff.
Nothing, as far as I know--not one word--from pro-war folks about the fact that Bush (or his Security Council) apparently had three chances to kill Zarqawi, and decided not to do so.
UPDATE: Not even in a big piece in the Weekly Standard which gives some of Zarqawi's history, and emphasizes how dangerous he is. He is a Sunni, but he apparently disagrees with Osama Bin Laden on some matters. In particular, he is determined to attack Shiites, the majority in Iraq but a small minority in the Moslem world at large.
The Baghdad story? Still tracking it. These authors say: "U.S. intelligence once thought he'd been injured in the American assault on Afghanistan and had taken refuge in northern Iraq, later traveling to Saddam's Baghdad to have his leg amputated; now they're not so sure."
Josh Marshall has some fun with this. "(Remember how Zarqawi was supposed to have had his leg amputated in Baghdad before the war? Notice how he now seems to have two legs?)"
|
