Should we have gone to war?(Iraq War)

NEW YORK, JULY 13

I said ten days ago that if I had known back in February 2003 what we know now I would not have counseled war against Iraq. That statement struck some as disloyal to a cause, some others as prime bait for exploitation by such as Senator Kerry. Then on July 12, President Bush gave an enormously illuminating speech to the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which sheds light on ambient questions. What especially catches the eye is his saying that "Libya is dismantling its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missile programs. This progress came about through quiet diplomacy between America, Britain, and the Libyan government."

The mind travels to the question: Why could not diplomacy have accomplished in Iraq what it accomplished in Libya? But the President keen-wittedly bases the success of Libya on quiet diplomacy, but quiet diplomacy backed up by our own commitment to "defending the peace by taking the fight to the enemy." He is contending, in effect, that if it hadn't been for our military entry into Iraq, Qaddafi might have continued his development of nuclear weapons. Who can dispositively argue that this analysis is wrong?

On that plane, here is one to ponder. Several years ago Saddam Hussein could have spent the night in any one of a hundred palaces he kept for his contingent whims. Now he sleeps in a 12 foot by 12 foot cell. What's going through his mind on the matter of doing things differently?

Obviously Saddam knew he didn't have a handy supply of weapons of mass destruction. Yet having apparently nothing to lose, he didn't cooperate with the U.N. search team sufficiently to establish that there were no such weapons in Iraq. So, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney--and Tony Blair and other government leaders--declared that he did have those weapons, and we proceeded to war. Not only was Saddam inexplicably ...