"The interpretation liberals are placing on this though is literally incredible. They leap to the conclusion President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair intentionally deceived the world. According to this reasoning, the political leaders knew the WMD threat was nonexistent and brazenly lied to drag their deluded publics into a war they wanted for other reasons.
What other reasons? Is this a watered-down "blood for oil" argument? And if Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair were telling lies about these weapons, then so were the intelligence services of France, Germany and Russia, as well as the U.N. Security Council. Further, if Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair were capable of such a colossal lie, why weren't they capable of planting the evidence?
Besides, there are many aspects of this war's history that did not turn out as predicted, and most of those surprises reflect poorly on antiwar, not pro-war, predictions. There were no massive civilian casualties, no severe damage to Iraq's infrastructure, no refugees, no rising Arab street, no increase in terror attacks at home, no involvement of Israel, no lengthy "quagmire" and very few American casualties.
The fate of those WMDs is an unfolding drama. But to believe they never existed is to flout all the available facts." |
