Via Meryl comes an article by Jonah Goldberg, in which he quotes from an article in the Atlantic, written by Kenneth Pollack, that itemizes the countries which, prior to our invasion of Iraq, all felt that Hussein’s Iraq was a serious threat as an uncontrollable country in probable possession of WMD’s. Chief among them: Germany, France, Britain and the United States. Given the oil-for-dollars scandal that recently surfaced and the dim view I have had of the UN and EU for years, I am not having a hard time believing (nor have I all along) that the US was not alone or unreasonable in determining that Hussein was a serious threat, and that major potential players were forced to abandon any idea of going up against Saddam as they were profiting from a cozy relationship with tyrant’s corrupt government. The fact that we found no WMD's does not preclude that we had good reason to believe that they existed, and Saddam's attitude with regard to UN weapons inspections did much to convince us of that fact as well.
In addition, the voter turnout in the recent election is reportedly doing much to turn the tide with the insurgency, according to this item from Gail at Crossing The Rubicon 2. All in all, I am even more convinced that the continual bleating of "No WMD's were found" will eventually fade into oblivion as we connect the dots to find that the vast majority of the Iraqi people do indeed want what the US has to offer and what we ourselves enjoy: Nothing less than Democracy and the right to live without fear and repression.
One of the problems that I see today is that we are so polarized as a nation and have heard so much rhetoric (from both sides) we have lost sight of the fact that we were not alone in assessing the potential danger that Saddam posed post 9/11 but prior to our invasion and ouster of a brutal dictator who had no regard for his own people, let alone the rest of the world.
yeah.
too bad goldberg was the receipient of a world-historical bitchslap by middle east scholar juan cole:
"What is there to say about a leading right-wing pundit who’s too stupid even to pretend to have read a book about Iraq, and too stupid to know when to crawl back into his Corner, sniff the smelling salts, and have his trainer toss in the towel? . . .
The rumor is that Jonah is changing the name of his blog from “The Goldberg File” to “Totally Uninformed Comment” as a permanent rebuke to Professor Cole’s out-of-touch liberal-elite insistence that people who declaim about Iraq in American mass media should know something about the subject at hand. “The thing he challenged or alleged was simply my unworthy stature to have an opinion,” writes Jonah. “Let me spell it out again: I think Cole is the sort of bullying professor most of us have encountered in one way or another.” No doubt this is quite true, if “most of us” means “wealthy, pampered, entitled right-wing know-nothings who behave in class as if our opinion is as good as anyone else’s because, you know, because everyone has a right to their opinion and shouldn’t be ‘bullied’ by professors with expertise.” And I’m pretty sure Jonah is the sort of student most of us have encountered in one way or another, too."
ouch!
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/arou/
Posted by: ethan at February 15, 2005 05:26 PM (Permalink)