Idiocy Returns

The Bush "lied us into war" talk is resuming. It is still stupid.

I won't even bother linking to the story that prompted this post. But the notion that President Bush (43) lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to trick us into war is just nonsense.

One, Saddam Hussein has an obligation under the 1991 Persian Gulf War ceasefire to prove to us that he disarmed. The ceasefire did not require us to prove he had not disarmed. Saddam apparently wanted to bluff the world (especially the Iranians) into thinking he still had WMD. So congratulations to him for succeeding on that, I guess.

Two, the intelligence that led us to believe Saddam had WMD was intelligence that our allies believed. It was intelligence that was believed in a bipartisan fashion here in America, too. That's the main reason that Congress passed and President Clinton signed legislation in 1998 making regime change in Iraq our official policy.

Indeed, for all those on the anti-Iraq War 1.0 side who say that WMD was the only legitimate reason to go to war with Saddam's Iraq in 2003 (ignoring the many other reasons in our declaration of war), prior to the war even they agreed with Bush that Iraq had chemical weapons--and yet many of them still opposed the war.

And three, Iraq had the ability to restart chemical weapons production in a small amount of time. Indeed, Iraq had raw materials to make chemical weapons that critics of the decision to go to war don't think are chemical weapons.

Yet the chemical weapons deal with Assad in Syria that has been lauded as a WMD disarmament triumph included raw materials in addition to poison gas among the WMD destruction successes.

Oh, and Assad managed to use chemical weapons anyway (from materials not part of the deal) and still has chemical weapons facilities standing.

So there you go. Saddam has chemical weapons stockpiles as defined for Assad; even a disarmament plan with Assad didn't get rid of his WMD; everyone--including the French, Saddam's generals, and Democrats here--believed Saddam had chemical weapons; and Saddam was the one who lied about chemical weapons.

At this point, asserting that President Bush lied about Iraq's WMD is a lie itself. And idiotic, of course.