Kristol, Woolsey, and the rest of that camp argued very, very strongly from 9/11 on that Iraq was involved in the attacks and/or the anthrax mailings.
I certainly recall Woolsey doing so extremely vigorously, and perhaps doing so as early as 9/11. He seemed knowledgeable, articulate, informed, etc. I recall thinking then that he was the cat's pajamas.
So I think it's not impossible that a crucial mental step toward this new war was taken on completely fraudulent grounds, and then retrospectively justified by heroic assumptions about unlikely contingencies. Thus, you no longer hear that Saddam helped perpetrate 9/11, but rather that he might help perpetrate the next one. Big difference, and if the latter point.
I must be missing something, but I don't think that Bush has ever explicitly said there was a linkage. If there were a credible linkage, I should think it would have been trumpeted to high heaven, and we would not be in the current hand-wringing mode.
Even a 40-60% contingency that Saddam will acquire a nuke or two in the next two or so years, in my view, is sufficiently dangerous such that we would be insane not to disarm him, the lack of an UN resolution notwithsanding. But how does one confidently quantify such a possibility? Beats me, though we do know containment has not worked and we can't expect it to work for the next two years. Sanctions and inspections are a joke and he could buy one or two loose ones, rendering his effort to make them irrelevant.
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