Last night Vice President Cheney offered what might be described as the Big Bang justification for pre-emptive war:
The effort that we’ve mounted with respect to Iraq focused specifically on the possibility that this was the most likely nexus between the terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.
That is, if we have enough bad people in the same area as some bad weapons, we are justified in attacking it, for inevitably this mixture will result in an al Qaeda attack upon America*.
Unfortunately a minor obstacle has arisen in applying this formula to Iraq, namely that there were no bad weapons in Iraq:
Contradicting the main argument for a war that has cost more than 1,000 American lives, the top U.S. arms inspector reported Wednesday that he found no evidence that Iraq produced any weapons of mass destruction after 1991. He also concluded that Saddam Hussein’s weapons capability weakened during a dozen years of U.N. sanctions before the U.S. invasion last year.
Contrary to prewar statements by President Bush and top administration officials, Saddam did not have chemical and biological stockpiles when the war began and his nuclear capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing, according to the report by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group.
So after the smoke has cleared–well, I guess Iraq is still smoking–we see that the UN sanction scheme and inspections were effectively weakening Saddam Hussein’s weapons capability. Yet Bush cut this short so he could invade Iraq to discover . . . that there were no weapons.
I don’t know why Kerry has had such a hard time addressing this, but in Friday’s debate he really needs to hammer home how Bush blundered by arbitrarily cutting short the inspections process so he could rush to war. We’ve spent thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in an effort which hasn’t made America any safer.
*Rule not valid in North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Pakistan.