House Erupts in War Debate - Los Angeles Times

House Erupts in War Debate - Los Angeles Times

I need to add a few remarks about WMD to the previous remarks about torture.

The debate about intelligence failures and WMD in Iraq are non-issues. We have other problems to solve now. Let the historians analyze this issue.

It is an issue in that we need to know if Bush is trustworthy. He was dishonest in the arguments he made for war. But he adopted a whatever-it-takes approach, and he believed he was doing the right thing. He didn't think that what he was saying was dishonest.

Results are what count. No amount of honesty at the beginning would protect Bush now, when the results are so bad. And no amount of dishonesty at the beginning would matter much now if the results had been good. We're attacking Bush because the war has clearly failed. The arguments he used to justify the mistake won't help us decide what to do now.

So that's the three parts of the argument: (1) It's not an issue now, when we have other problems to solve. (2) Bush's honesty is an issue, but we already know about his dishonesty because he tied Hussein to al Qaeda in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. (3) The key question now is results, not the nature of the arguments used to justify the war in the first place. The results have been bad, and we want to figure out what to do now.

That's all for now!