January 30, 2005The RMPN and the WarArguing with the RMPN is a bizarre experience, rather like the last election's rhetoric extended forward into real time. You're never quite sure what they're getting at. For some reason, they have a bone to pick with me this morning. It seems they don't like the fact that, as the Princess Bride would have it, "I do not think that report says what you say it says." In fact, the Duelfer Report says quite explicitly that Saddam was keeping intact his weapons programs and research teams, using the Oil-for-Food program to do so. Contemporaneous MSM accounts of the report, at the height of an election season, make this quite clear. My point in the original posting was that the Duelfer Report was being quoted as saying one thing, when it says quite another. The link above will take you to a number of contemporaneous media accounts of the Report, all confirming the plain meaning of the report. There can be no doubt that the administration used the presumed WMD threat as a justification for the timing of the war. That no substantial quantities of WMD had been found played a large role in the election, although not one large enough to defeat the President. Nevertheless, the larger goal of democratizing Iraq, thus defeating the terrorists ideologically on a central battlefield, was always part of the plan, as the contemporaneous demonization of Paul Wolfowitz bears out. Finally, everyone, all the time, makes policy based on what they think will happen. The prospective story that Duelfer tells, that a bought-off France, Germany, Russia, and China, would help keep Saddam on life-support until the sanctions regime was removed, and after that, would help him rebuild, including WMDs, squares with both evidence at the time, and subsequent history. Posted by joshuasharf at January 30, 2005 11:15 AM | TrackBack |
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