amconmag.com/06_30_03/buchanan.html
That these questions are being asked, not only by America's critics, is the fault of the administration alone. For its crucial argument as to why it had no choice but to launch the first preventive war in American history is collapsing like a sand castle in a rising surf. Iraq, in retrospect, was no threat whatsoever to the United States. We fought an unnecessary war, and now we must rebuild a nation at a rising cost in blood and treasure. Before the war, many who opposed it argued that no matter the evil character of Saddam, Iraq had not attacked us, did not threaten us, did not want war with us, could not defeat us. Came the administration answer: Saddam has ties to al-Qaeda. He is a year or so away from being able to build a nuclear bomb, and he will use these weapons on us or our allies, or give them to terrorists who will use them in the United States. And these weapons will kill not just the 3,000 who perished on Sept. Do you want to do nothing and risk a "mushroom cloud" in an American city? Opponents answered that the UN inspectors had found nothing, that Saddam had even invited in the CIA to have a look, that surely he could not launch a sneak attack on America or her allies with UN inspectors rummaging around his country. Hans Blix, they said, was an incompetent and an appeaser who would deliberately not find weapons rather than be responsible for causing a war. So President Bush launched America's first pre-emptive war, and it was a triumph of American arms. It is impossible to believe the president would deliberately lie to the nation when he knew the full truth would be discovered at war's end in a few weeks. Either he was misled, or he was deceived, and, so, too, was Secretary of State Colin Powell. Who was responsible for the intelligence failure, or the dishonest use of selected intelligence, or the conscious and deliberate deceit of a president and secretary of state? We have searched 300 sites and arms dumps and found not one shell. If he destroyed them before the war, as Rumsfeld now argues, he fulfilled the terms of Resolution 1441 and could have saved himself by showing UN inspectors where and how he did it. Why would Saddam let himself, his family, and his regime perish protecting weapons he either no longer had or did not intend to use? Is it possible Iraq never had that vast arsenal of anthrax, VX, sarin, and mustard gas we were led to believe? Did the intelligence agencies fail us, or did someone "cook the books" to meet the recipe for an imperial war? It is time Congress investigated the Office of Special Plans, set up in the Pentagon to sift and interpret all intelligence and placed under neoconservative super-hawk, Paul Wolfowitz.
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