Scott Ritter? Anyone? He was after all, part of the group that destroyed the WMDs in the 90's.

Why was he to be disbelieved?

Sure, but penty of people who figured Saddam was dangerous still knew he was small potatoes in the world of actual threat. Or is that the real reason they sat idly by? He was not an important target but a safe one?

I think Kevin's right that there was widespread fear in the foreign policy community of being "provably wrong." Of course, the possibility of being "provably wrong" on the issue of Saddam Hussein's WMD rested on two assumptions that should have been more vigorously contested in the foreign policy community before the war.

1. That the US should invade and forcibly change the regimes of countries that have WMD programs that we think are not in our national self interest. What ever happened to containment?

2. Whether "WMD," meant to include chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, is a meaningful category. After all, ONLY nuclear weapons have ever been shown to be truly weapons of mass destruction. Conventional bombing campaigns do more damage than chemical and biological weapons do. Terrorists attacks using chemical weapons have never been all that impressively successful.

The failure to debate these highly debatable assumptions, and the consequent narrowing of the pre-war foreign policy discussion, speaks of group-think and careerism rather than simple fear of being "provably wrong."

Or plenty, even.

While Kevin's thesis may be correct, it is simply not true to say that "everyone" believed SH had a active WMD program that could put usable weapons on the battlefield.

That's the key - SH might have had a lab or two, might have had a few old missles lying around, but to have a system that could have provided usable battlefield weapons - no. Many were suggesting that the inspectors, the sanctions and his own disorganized leadership had resulted in Iraq having old, unusable WMD, or just some left over random capability.

For people in government service, particularly in the executive branch, it's not so easy to speak out against the crowd...

I remember reading comments by a member of the intelligence community who was told, in effect: "This war is going to happen. It's like an oncoming freight train, and you don't want to be standing in front of it, making futile gestures in hopes it will stop."

For those NOT in federal service, of course, the fear (I think) was as you suggest, that of being proved publicly wrong.

But moreoever, there was a sense that the administration wasn't SO crazy to steer us THAT far wrong -- that if they claimed there were WMDs that loudly and that emphatically, they must know something the rest of us don't know.

Little did we know how willing they were to distort and cherry-pick the intelligence available. Their willingness to conceal and deceive surprised many among even the most jaded and experienced Washington watchers.

Exactly what Frances just said. There was never ANY discussion. The whole thing was pre-ordained

Imminent threat to the US.What was SH going to do: throw them at us ?

Frances was right. Plus Saddam had a track record of NOT using WMD in Gulf War I. Gassing the Kurds, though a horrible war crime, does not figure as using WMD. Plus, after years of sanctions, any delivery system he had would have been unreliable at best.

there's also the argument that iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and attacking sh would diminish our ability to fight al qaeda. combining this with what frances said is a pretty compelling argument not to invade without having to go out on a limb.

As some people here are suggesting, I think that while you're right that most people believed he had some WMD, there was FAR LESS agreement about what this meant. No one believed he had nukes or could get them. Many or most people thought he had, at best, aging chemical and bio weapons that dated back to the first war. And there was ample evidence for anyone who cared to look that the inspections following the first war had been very successful in preventing further build-up (read: they work as a mechanism).

And here's one more thing that I wondered about: if the US was really so freaked out that Saddam had these weapons, why was it so quick to invade? See North Korea as a useful constrasting analogue.

You are giving way too much credit, way too much leeway to the pro-war people.

The phrase "weapons of mass destruction" allowed the pro-war people to equate things like nerve gas with nuclear missiles. Thus, the arguable claim that Saddam Hussein had not accounted for the destruction of every canister of nerve gas was deemed support for the claim that the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud. This was completely dishonest.

More important. The question was not whether Saddam Hussein was a really bad man, or whether he had any remaining canisters of gas, but whether invading and (by necessity) occupying Iraq was a good idea. It was never a good idea!

The wide-spread consensus that "something" had to be done about Saddam Hussein was morphed into "we have to invade and occupy Iraq" without any consideration of any other options.

That, Kevin, is where the cowards cost us the most.

Kevin I find your thesis troubling. It kind of implies that the only "professionally possible" alternative to the seeming 100 percent certainty of neocon central, was nearly 100 percent certainty that the active WMD position was wrong. Such is a dangerous state of affairs, and if true provides clear evidence of how far the country has strayed.

Question: Did Colin Powell know the truth about the aluminum tubes? When did he know it? Further did he know it was manufactured of whole cloth? Wasn't it really incumbent upon him, before placing his imprimatur on the Bushco certainty, to really verify what was going on? If the truth was, our intelligence was so poor,that he couldn't know, he had no business endorsing as absolute truth something not known to be, and further something which such massive mortal consequences.

Powell's endorsement largely made all of it possible. His failure and the failure of all those others in the know about the true state of intelligence, to temper or contradict the certainty being portrayed by Bush and Cheney, stands as a historical travesty.

Sec. State Colin Powell had no problem publicly disagreeing with the notion that Saddam had any significant WMD capability. In early 2001, he said that Saddam had been unable to recreate any WMD capabilities or programs, and was unable to even project conventional military force against his neighboring countries. National Security Advisor C. Rice also opined around this time that Saddam was 'in a box,' under control.

Note that there was a notable watershed incident in the middle of the Saddam and WMD timeline, known as Operation Desert Fox. If perhaps it was thought prior to this that Saddam had multiple hidden WMD production lines, this air attack over several days would have wrecked them all, starting with the 600 cruise missile initial volley of the war, and continuing with days of intense bombardment. Several dozen of the 'royal palaces' complexes that Saddam had ruled off limits to the inspectors were blown up, along with any and all sites for which there were suspicions.

Saddam had an advanced WMD program, their credibility would have been completely shot. Their only recourse would have been to argue that Saddam never would have used his WMD, an argument that, given Saddam's temperament, would have sounded like special pleading even to most liberals.

This is part of the problem: there was then and is above, a lack of specificity that confuses the issue. "WMD" isn't scary; nukes are scary. Did everyone think he had an active and advanced nuclear program? I don't remember that. His use of WMD: against whom? I could easily imagine him using WMD against his own people and weaker states. It was then, and is now, harder to imagine him using them against us. I seem to recall at least some analysts made this point.

If people wanted to say he would screw around more in his region if he had the defensive shield provided by WMD, they should have said it. But amorphous claims like the above led the public to believe that we were talking about defending the "homeland," and helped get us into Iraq in the first place.

WMD programs should have been largely besides the point. Even if we assume that a large scale military invasion was the only response for WMD the possible existence of which we couldn't afford to ignore despite the lack of any real evidence, how did we end up in place where there were no substantial post occupation plans? Not just a plan that went wrong, but no plan at all. If the war could not be stopped, and regardless one wasn't willing to take a stand, what stopped people from describing how the war should be executed?

What made Saddam's "temperament" so dangerous? He was a thug surrounded by thugs, and thuggish countries. He had been whooped in Kuwait, and knew not to try it again, had been stalemated by Iran, and he was old (in his late 60s at the time of the invasion). He was, and obviously had been for some time, more interested in holding power for himself than fomenting trouble anywhere. Drum's post underscores one of the triumphs of our corrupt foreign policy community: they have established, as if it were fact, the widely held belief that Saddam was any more unstable and dangerous than anyone else in the M.E. The evidence for it is shaky at best, but no one examines the evidence, they just state it as fact and then build (unfortunate) arguments using it as a premise.

[Persistent, but banned. Not for conservatism, but for relentless trolling.]

Kevin, talking about "WMD" as though it is a homogeneous category is almost as stupid as talking about "Islam" as though it's a homogeneous category.

Sunni not equal Shia not equal Arab not equal Persian etc.

With WMDs:

Chemical not equal biological not equal nuclear. VERY VERY DIFFERENT ISSUES WITH EACH.

What you say about WMDs--that everyone thought Saddam had them--applies 99% to chemicals. It applies maybe %50 percent to biologicals. And it applies maybe %10 to nukes.

But it was nukes--the ones that the experts doubted the most--that were used to railroad us into war. They were the greatest fear, for obvious reasons. But they were the ones that well-informed people thought Saddam was least likely to own.

This is a really important issue: the fears that sold the war could have been dispelled by knowledge and skepticism that was out there.

Conversely, the near-universal agreement about chem weapons never would have panicked the American populace into a war.

You should re-think this talk about "WMD's"

The economic policy experts are close to being routine hacks in a number of areas as well.

I don't mind a take down of the foreign policy country club, but lets not prop up the economic clowns too much.

I think the Free Trade Mickey Mouse Club is just as blinded as well, but to their credit Alan Blinder (no pun intended) has begun to break away from his original cheerleading.

But that's the major differnce isn't it? If as a foreign policy expert I tell you Iraq will be a "cakewalk", then my opinion may lead to insufficient planning and resources that get thousands of people killed in a short period of time.

In comparison, as a free trade supporting economic advisor I tell you that continued support of free trade policy is a net good for the US, and consequently millions of people in this country lose their jobs as entire industries are outsourced over a period of decades, then picture may not be clear that I fucked up in a big way.

Point being that the economists get a free ride in many cases because they can hide behind time and the vagaries of their profession.

So lets tar and feather them too.

There was in fact an article in Foreign Affairs during the run-up to the war that argued that only a U.S. attack on Saddam would cause him to use his WMDs in the U.S. homeland. Possession of them was a premise.

I was against the war, although I assumed Saddam had active chemical and biological weapons programs, and a dormant nuclear program. I didn't think he posed a pressing threat, and it was pretty obvious that the Bush administration meant to make Iraq stage one of a much broader, and hare-brained sheme. But I didn't strongly oppose the war, and wasn't willing to join protests, etc., for reasons I think were widely shared among liberals and moderates.

After all, how could one strongly oppose something that, if nothing else, would remove one of the two or three most brutal regimes in the world? I remember thinking, "Almost no matter what, the Iraqi people will be better off." I didn't expect a new and democratic Iraq to magicly come into existence, but certainly didn't expect the dystopia we unleased.

I'm with Freances, Jeff and others. Here is a fact to which too little attention was paid at the time. The late Robin Cook, who was a member of Blair's cabinet (at one time he had been foreign secretary. but held a different office as the war approached--I can't remember which). He resigned in protest just before the commencement of hostilities. He said, as I recall, that he thought SH may (probably) had some WW I type chemical and the means of delivering them on the battlefield, but that he did not have WMDs if this meant weapons that could be used to inflict mass casualties on us or our allies, i.e., no nuclear weapons and no means of delivering the chem weapons beyond a very limited radius (while we were being regaled with stores of drones attacking the East Coast of N. America, Britons were being frightened with stories about attacks on the British garrison in Cyprus). RC is not infallible any more than anyone else, but he had an excellent record, as a member of the cabinet he was privy to the best intelligence, and he staked out a position that made the crucial distinctions within the far too elastic and much abused conept of WMD that looked good then, and has only gained lustre with time. And he resigned on principle!!!! This shows what is possible. It's not good enough to say, as we hear over and over again, that everyone thought there were WMDs if that covers views like that of Cook, who thought there might have been some chemical weapons. The community failed not by hesitating to say 'there are no WMDs at all' at the outset, but by refusing to say a little later 'we've got Saddam where we want him, subject to intrusive inspections supported by the int'l community and backed up by a credible threat of force--it would be crazy to go to war'.

Their only recourse would have been to argue that Saddam never would have used his WMD, an argument that, given Saddam's temperament, would have sounded like special pleading even to most liberals.

Wasn't the principled recourse not to abdicate the power to declare war regardless of "gut feelings" concerning WMD?

What about being provably wrong when no WMD were found? That doesn't seem to have troubled anyone.

To say that everyone was convinced that Saddam had WMD is a copout.

The facts of Saddam's particular case had to be considered together with the duplicitous and the deceitful nature of the warmongers in the GOP. It was clear on even a superficial examination of all the avilable facts and historical data that GWB and his cohorts were making the case for war based on nothing but thin air.

It is perfectly reasonable to insist that those who claimed to be experts and yet went along with this fiasco be held accountable for their lack of analytical insight.

This stuff is getting all blurred. Exactly what period of time is Kevin referring to in the run up to war? Doves and war opponents had different situations and different options at different times.

It also doesn't address another possible fear of congressional democrats. That the administration was not only lying to them and the American people, but they were willing to frame Saddam with a freighter of yellow cake or a bombed out bunker with anthrax residue. It's at least one way to interpret the self-assuredness of a rather experienced whitehouse team.

Matt: I remember thinking, "Almost no matter what, the Iraqi people will be better off." I didn't expect a new and democratic Iraq to magicly come into existence, but certainly didn't expect the dystopia we unleased.

That's why we should listen to foreign policy experts like 1994 Cheney when we consider the consequences of our foreign policy actions.

Everyone agreed that he had an active WMD program only because Saddam was Saddam, not because they had any evidence. It was convenient and more risk averse than the alternative. But that is not really the point. The point should have been whether those weapons, even if they were being developed, posed a direct and immediate threat to the United States. Was Saddam's situation a clear, justifiable reason for the United States to launch an aggressive,unprovoked military attack against another recognized nation? That is the crux of the spinelessness; they did not rise up and declare unprovoked aggressive attack to be both inconsistent with America's foreign policy and morally repugnant.

Nothing in the mix in 2003 justified undeclared aggressive war and our foreign policy experts meekly accepted that pre-emptive war was the correct path and in the best interest for the U.S. They should never be forgiven for allowing that to happen without an uproar from them.

It's just a club designed to protect the status quo

But what is that status quo? I bet if one followed the money back from the non-governmental foreign policy establishment, one would find defense contractors and pro-Israel lobbyists. Overturning the current we-need-a-big-military-because-we-meddle-everywhere consensus would mean a lot of 'serious' people would have to get real jobs.

While I agree with the bulk of the posters demonstrating that WMD is a silly term, I haven't seen a different point made: everyone was wrong (okay, someone mentioned it while I was composing).

Let me say that again:

Everyone was wrong.

So the question becomes, why was everyone wrong? Everyone was wrong because there was insufficient information. Everyone being wrong is generally bad, but in this case the result is millions of dead, wounded, and displaced (see how using a broad enough category distorts the view - I didn't say there were millions of dead, but the phrasing lends itself to that interpretation - just like WMD).

That everyone was wrong means that assault on the Iraqi people was unprovoked. This is why wars of aggression like Bush's War on Iraq are against international law. The basis for the war was ignorance combined with arrogance. The results speak for themselves.

The recourse argument is not that Saddam wouldn't use his WMDs, it is that he COULDN'T use them.

Look, I opposed the war, and, as you astutely pointed out, I thought Saddam most likely had WMDs.

The fact was, it didn't matter, just as while a nuclear N. Korea is a bad state of affairs, in the end they can't use those weapons against us. Against others? Sure, but only in a suicidal gambit.

So, I think it is unfair to say that those of us against the war were worried about being wrong about the existence or use of WMDs. Many of us thought that they existed, but knew that the threat of them being used against anyone was incredibly small, and against us was an impossibility.

This unanimity started to break down when the UN inspections failed to turn up anything, but before that you could count the number of genuine WMD doubters on one hand.

Gosh, Kevin Drum’s astute thinking is equal only to that of Joe Klein's.

Bush started a smear campaign to quickly stifle ANY dissent - Joe Wilson was smeared as was Han Blix and his entire team, along with the fact that Sen. Carl Levin pulled George Tenet into congressional testimony nearly every day in the bogus build up to war.

Senators who got looked at Bush and Cheney's war evidence never found no compelling evidence as to points made by Sen. McCain, Sen. Inhofe – both Repugs and Sen. Chris Dodd.

We had Kenneth Pollack’s book but now the same author is lying about how well the surge is going.

And if he would lie about the how well the surge is going – he would write a book that was a lie too.

Yes, it was a conspiracy.

It was vast left-wing and right-wing political conspiracy whereby we went in for WMD but are staying to protect “our vital national interest” according to Hillary Clinton. And you have nearly as many private security people as US military in Iraq making somewhere close to 240 thousand a year each. Who could possible pay that kind of money? Western oil contractors with peak oil lies?

There were lots more that 10 people who thought WMD was a lie – can’t make a lie that big without a mountain of truth being there all along.

AND Blix may not have called Bush a liar, but by the time the US went to war – we already knew it was a lie.

oops:

Senators who got to looked at Bush and Cheney's war evidence never found ANY compelling evidence to point towards WMD, and statements were made to that issue by Sen. McCain, Sen. Inhofe – both Repugs and Sen. Chris Dodd.

The following is not a cohesive argument, but rather some points I have been thinking about in reaction to Kevin's seeming defense of the "foreign policy clerisy".

Being provably wrong doesn't seem to carry much baggage these days, so fear of it would be somewhat uncalled for, at least in hindsight. If you go back and remember what was being presented as proof for WMD's it was very tenuous and equivocal:

All the inspectors couldn't find anything. No chemical labs or stockpiles; no nuclear weapons; no fissionable materials; no delivery systems; nothing.

The Powell presentation was a complete fake; even as he addressed the UN I thought the exhibits showed nothing, the intercepted radio transmissions were particularly baffling.

Everything presented as proof was qualified and inconclusive.

I just didn't make any sense: how could Hussein be a threat to the USA from thousands of miles away? By all accounts he had been held in check by no-fly zones, UN sanctions, oil for food, weapons inspectors, boycotts and the Gulf War and the war with Iran. He had no demonstrable capability to wreak havoc even on his neighbors, much less the USA. He had no ties to Al Queda. He was weak and I think that the White House knew it; he was weak and the White House thought he was an easy target. We attacked Hussein not because he was a threat, but because he wasn't a threat.

The White House's arguments and proposals were so obviously biased toward invasion that any kind of real discussion or inquiry was stifled. It was a complete power move. It was a thinly veiled Imperialistic land grab. We were intimidated into war.

As to what we "believed", that almost doesn't matter because too much of the information was distorted, witheld, or not available. Most people were not in a position to judge fairly what they believed to be true about WMD's because we were deceived.

That we collectively we plunged into a quagmire of catastrophic proportions was not something that was unforeseen by everyone, its just that most people didn't believe that our leadership could be so bad; so we went along.

I, for one, never bought into the rationalization for invading Iraq. Many others didn't buy it either, but the people who make decisions have been too isolated from reality, too threatened by entrenched powers, and too timid to think and act on their own, to challenge the handful of people who led us to war.

Fear of being wrong only affects people who have a stake in always being right, which obviously does not include the White House and its enablers.

I am less concerned about the honesty of some "closet doves" who may or may not have been assertive enough prior to the invasion, than with the honesty of those prosecuted this war and their enablers.

This post is nonsense and Atrios is correct.

No "expert" is afraid to go out on a limb and make possibly completely wrong statements, if what they say represents elite interests. You don't risk losing respectability as a pundit by saying, for example, that North-Korea is teaming up with Hezbollah and Al Qaeda and therefore the US needs to stay in Iraq. It is only dangerous to go out on that limb if you say something against elite consensus - and that's risky even if you are right.

And, p.s., though many people may have expected before the invasion that Saddam had a few bottles of mustard gas left somewhere (WMD! WMD! We found them!), no sane person seriously believed he was a threat to his neigbors, let alone the USA.

I have two comments to make about this.

(1) the fact that (nearly) everyone thought Saddam had WMDs just means the group think goes back further than this adminstration. Yes, Clinton was an idiot about Iraq too, though he wasn't such an idiot as to invade the place. The fact is that Saddam was a run of the mill tyranical asshole. He was blown up into this avatar of evil, but it was always silly. I remember someone telling me before the war that Saddam had man-sized paper shredders that he fed people into. Say what?!

(2) Kevin you say that (nearly) everyone thought Saddam had WMDs until the inspections weren't turning up anything. Why are folks excused from thinking after that point? Surely the point of inspections was to find out about the WMDs? Most of the rhe rest of the world certainly took a look at that and said "we'll sit this one out, thanks." Why are we especially gifted with stupidity?

Kevin, I think this was a very effective and even courageous post. I have no doubt but that you'll receive endless amounts of abuse because of it.

If we on the left are going to call ourselves with any justice "reality-based", we have to acknowledge the realities of what people actually thought they knew before the Iraq War commenced. I know of virtually no one on the left who really believed that Saddam did not have chemical weapons, or, indeed, biological weapons.

One thing, though, that I object to in your characterization of the issue is your implication that anyone who in any way criticized the war would be "provably wrong" if the WMD were found.

It's certainly true that if WMD had actually been found, it would have made the Iraq war politically very acceptable in the short run to the American public. My expectation is that it would have steeled the support of the war for a number of years and many thousands of deaths of American soldiers.

But whether WMD were found or no, the underlying problem with the insurgency and chaos in Iraq would surely have come about just as it has. Steadily, we would have invested blood and treasure in Iraq, and, over a longer rather than shorter period of time, the American public would have had to ask the question of whether the war was worth it. Had chemical and biological weapons been found, the dangers posed to Americans by having them in Saddam's hands would have seemed more and more doubtful.

You see, an Iraq war, even in the face of discovered "WMDs", would quite likely have long term negative consequences. While any criticism of the war might seem "proved wrong" in the short run, it would not be proved wrong in the long run, even politically.

My deep problem with the foreign policy community is how little was ever said about the long term difficulties an occupation of Iraq might pose. It seems pretty damn clear that there was a very real understanding of the potential for chaos in Iraq, yet how many people in that community spoke up about that? THIS is what they had an obligation to warn us about, no matter what. It is certainly a failure of courage that they did not make that point loud and clear. And it is a point they could very well have argued even in the presence of "WMDs" in Iraq; they would never have been "proved wrong" on that point.

Why, for example, didn't Foreign Affairs publish articles that addressed the long term consequences of an Iraq war? I have zero doubt but that there were any number of foreign policy experts who realized the issues an Iraq war might pose for introducing chaos. Why not a single peep, as best I can see, out of Foreign Affairs on this? (The only article FA could point to "criticizing" the war in its runup was one that assumed that WMD existed, and might be used against the US forces.) Is this not exactly the place where one would expect to see long term issues addressed?

I didn't know whether Saddam had WMDs, and didn't care. It seemed to me that we managed to use diplomacy and guile well enough to outlast a very big country with very heavy weapons--why couldn't we use the same techniques to tame Iraq? Why unleash such a destructive force as war when patience and diplomacy could be applied instead? I keep remembering a poster we had on the door where I worked. "War is not good for children and other living things."

Remember critically that the UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq from November 2002 until March 2009 found no WMDs after surveying all key sites known by them from their long experience with Iraq and pointed out by others and that the UN inspectors asked for only another three months to complete their survey. Another three months!

I think this historical fact is lost now on the American people.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Those UN inspectors, of course, were on the ground in Iraq from November 2002 to March 2003.

Sorry.

The UN inspectors, of course, were on the ground in Iraq from November 2002 until March 2003.

It appears that "a fear of being provably wrong" is certainly not detering the Bushco/neocon faithful! Nor has it seemed to have a very negative impact on the foreign policy clowns that supported the invasion for that very (claimed) reason.

FWI-Although I am nowhere near an expert, I easily found skepticism throughout the internet and more mass media in the fall on 2002 and shared it with my friends. The standard response was "The President must know about classified information that he isn't telling us, and I have no reason to distrust the President".

To which I always responded, "You should know good and well that if there was some secret evidence, it would be paraded in front of the world to justify the upcoming war. What possible reason could anyone have for hiding pertinent information to save sources when all kinds of other info is being released and the results of war would be the loss of thousands of lives"

So now Kevin, there were more than a handful of people who disbelieved the pronouncements. You simply were not looking for them and nor were the serious people throughout Washington.

Sec. State Colin Powell had no problem publicly disagreeing with the notion that Saddam had any significant WMD capability. In early 2001, he said that Saddam had been unable to recreate any WMD capabilities or programs, and was unable to even project conventional military force against his neighboring countries. National Security Advisor C. Rice also opined around this time that Saddam was 'in a box,' under control.

Bingo, we have a winner...

"after all, everyone agreed that Saddam Hussein was a brutal and unpredictable thug and almost everyone agreed that he had an active WMD program. (Note: Please do some research first if you want to disagree with this. The plain fact is that nearly everyone — liberal and conservative, American and European, George Bush and Al Gore — believed Saddam was developing WMDs"
These are talking points. I recall hearing them from Tim Russert, always presented as facts. Why so much agreement? Except for United States intelligence agencies, who in the world had any ability to judge whether he had an "active WMD program", whatever that means? No one. The only hard evidence available to anyone outside the intelligence communities was the fact that he did not use them in the first Gulf War.
On the other hand, I recall the German foreign minister declaring, in public, in a meeting of the allies: I am not convinced. I recall an impassioned speech by the French foreign minister at the UN saying: don't do it. I recall Hans Blix and El Baradei essentially screaming, but only between the lines, and only if you cared to pay attention: WTF?!. I recall critical coverage of Powell's UN speech, bordering on ridicule (but then, I live in Europe). I recall large majorities of public opinion across Europe opposed to the war. Because they approve of thug Saddam, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons?
There were more positions possible than Mr Drum is presenting. Those who thought the invasion was wrong, but may nevertheless prove successful. Those who felt the risks were too high. Those who were afraid that the ideology of the Bush doctrine of preemption is dangerous, and should under no circumstances be put into practice. Those who thought it wasn't about Saddam and WMD in the first place, but the projection of military power to secure geopolitical interests. Those who thought it was critical to have international support, as Bush I had done the first time around. He is right that cowardice or insecurity or opportunism played a role, but he is taking too easy an out. And he is neglecting the probably more important point, which is the real issue: why were the dynamics the way they were, and how can those structures be changed?

frankly0 -- See: America's Imperial Ambition (FA), The Bush Doctrine and War with Iraq (Parameters), and When Soldiers Become Cops (FA). Those are ones that stuck out; there are others but I can't point to them off the top of my head.

It's worth noting that much of the criticism had a broader scope than just Iraq; just because a piece didn't focus exclusively on Iraq didn't mean it wasn't sounding a serious warning about Iraq. Specifically, the new policy of preemption (or prevention *cough*), and the military's ability to engage in peacekeeping operations (or OOTW, "Operations Other Than War").

There were plenty of people who knew that Iraq had no significant WMD program in 2002, but anyone who said so was /automatically excluded from the conversation/. Not part of the foreign policy establishment, not allowed on teevee (Atrios' "no liberals on the teevee" rule which is ==still in force today==), not allowed to speak in any meaningful forum.

So Kevin's repetition of the Radical Right's talking point meme that "everyone thought Saddam had WMDs" is correct to a certain extent: everyone who thought otherwise was labeled "not serious" and shut up.

Cranky

This is all shit. At the time of the war start, Blix had been in Iraq for 6 months, and had found nothing. NOTHING. It was all just lies to get us to war. Why? To allow his buddies to rape and pillage the treasury for defense contracts.

All this talk about very serious policy analysts leaves me to ask about the insane rightwingers they put on TV? No one argues that Melanie Morgan, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter are even pretending to be serious, do they? And what's with the cross-eyed Dick Cheney aide?

If they're experience is limited to talk radio, they have hissy fits on the air, and are repeatedly (and provably) wrong maybe they shouldn't get invited back or given their own show.

Kevin:

http://steveaudio.blogspot.com/2007/08/time-will-tell-on-their-power-minds.html

"The plain fact is that nearly everyone — liberal and conservative, American and European, George Bush and Al Gore — believed Saddam was developing WMDs"

I'm sorry, Kevin, but the very fact that you use this bullshit term WMD shows that you are part of the problem. Why does the term WMD exist? To confuse the issue between nuclear weapons (itself a misleading conflation of fission weapons - scary, and fusion weapons - really scary) and chemical/bio weapons (right now, at least, no scarier than conventional explosives).
No-one honest believed that Iraq was near nuclear weapons, hence the use of a term that disguises this fact.

So what did we have in 2002?
Hussein, a very bad man, one of several in the world, might have been trying to develop weapons no more lethal than those possessed by plenty of other bad men in the world (some of which get their weapons from the US). Based on this it made sense to invade?
You are simply WRONG in your claim that everyone who matters supported the war, and did so because they were afraid Hussein might turn out to be a supervillian.

FWIW the exact same bullshit dynamic is going on right now wrt terrorism. Every few weeks someone pops up to tell us the terrorists are going to kill us all, (just a few days ago we had the LA Times telling us that "self-alienizing small groups of US residents" are about to kill and eat us all), and people like Drum dutifully dissect this statement in very serious fashion, never asking the essential question - so freaking what?

The world is full of bad things that hurt us --- criminals, earthquakes, auto accidents. We don't turn our society upside down and destroy our civil liberties to deal with these other problems. But when it comes to terrorists, ooh...

I, no foreign policy expert, said the Iraq war was BS.
And I, no terrorism expert, say the "war on terror" is BS. Not because terrorists will never again kill another American, but because it is not worth destroying our society --- and that is what we are ever so eagerly doing --- over such a miniscule threat.

Really, Kevin? The punishment for being wrong in one's prediction of the status of Saddam Hussein's WMD program is that one's "credibility would have been completely shot"?

Given the last four years, you could have fooled me, because I can't pick up a fucking paper without reading spurts of pro-war apologism from an array of Very Serious Persons in the Washington Foreign Policy Establishment.

I'm with frankly0.

I willingly conceded the point that Saddam had chemical weapons, missiles, tanks, etc. I don't remember anyone thinking he had a nuke. There was that aluminum tube thing, but I don't remember anyone thinking Saddam had any luck making a nuke.

The question I kept screaming at the tv was "and what happens after we invade?!" I predicted only a strongman could keep the country from chaos/civil war/partition/war between Saudi, Iran, Turkey, & former Iraq (which would murder gas prices.)

Fear of being wrong and fear of being excluded from the privileged clubs goes hand in hand, and are not really distinct.

I agree with Kevin that the primary fear here was being wrong about this event of awesome signifigance - war in Iraq - which would then lead to losing VIP status and so on.

The easy thing to do was to go along with the crowd, since it looked like they were going for the war, even though it was generally known this was a cynical enterprise, distracting from the effort to capture and kill Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and was to guarantee the deaths of thousands upon thousands of civilians, women and children, and all of this after Saddam had basically surrendered and capitulated to the 100% Inpections Regime.

These cowards basically hid their heads and implicitly signed off on the deaths of these thousands (actually tens if not hundreds of thousands now in fact) of innocents, while also destroying the American moment in the world after 9-11 when the people of the world were with us, and accepted the rank and base premise of preventive war, for what?

An obviously bogus enterprise that was justified by lies and documented as so before the killings began.

War sceptics did NOT have to go way out on a limb. Weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq before we invaded, and they weren't finding anything. It would not have taken much to say "wait until the inspections are done" or Saddam throws them out again. And Bush and company had been telling lie after lie from the beginning. There was absolutely NO reason to trust them, their case for war or their competence to execute a war and occupation. In fact, we had been in Afghanistan for a year and a half, and our performance there should have been a big yellow flag for anyone in the coalition of the braindead (ahem).

I thought it was pretty easy to see that Saddam didn't have WMD. What was not so easy to predict was whether the US would plant some after the invasion.

First, you use your critical reading skills, and second, do some reading.

All of the claims of WMD were refuted before the war. The fact that the people making those claims had to lie continuously ("Saddam kicked out the inspectors" etc) was another clue to take their claims with a lot of caution.

Of course, the final clue was Saddam begging to be inspected in December 2002 and the warmongers coming up with BS "reasons" not to do it.

The playbook is always the same. They're running it on Iran right now. Considering what you'll pay in taxes to watch this show, you might as well take a good look at the program.

It is vital to remember:

1. In 2003, most people did believe that Saddam had chemical and possibly biological weapons. They also believed he wanted nukes.

2. This belief was structured as follows: He had them in 1991 - we weren't able to force him to get rid of them. If he threw out the inspectors rather than give them up, he sure isn't going give them up on his own. Aka, he must still have them.

Not an unreasonable argument.

3. He had been contained since 1991, but the sanctions that contained him were rapidly falling apart.

BTW: the same people who argued against invasion also argued against sanctions. Their preferred course of action remains unclear.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/022000-107.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views/070700-103.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views/081100-104.htm

As for those arguing that Saddam couldn't use WMD against us, you have to remember that "us" to neocons and theocons includes Isreal. The "threat" was some sort of dirty bomb to Isreal, not any US territory. Of course they didn't say that or the war might not have been as popular (and it was darn popular long enough for a quick photo op or two).

March, 2003:

It's a crucial time in American history. The incompetent, scandalous and crooked are becoming the norm. The latest incident involving the forgery of the Niger nuclear documents is a telling case-in-point. Confronted with this development, a key component of our case for war against Iraq, all we get from our leaders and these documents' former champions is a shrug. Oh well, we passed it along in "good faith". We are not incompetent, or criminal, it just managed to "slip through". Forget about it. And we couldn't have been responsible for it, because our people are competent, talented professionals who surely would have done a better job of forging these documents. And so on...

Only this information is, and was, unforgettably important. We expressed it at the highest levels of our power apparatus, as a justification for a very expensive, in both human lives and material cost, war against Iraq. A war in which we've articulated our possible use of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear and chemical, as a "defensive" measure "should it come to that". A war which has divided the world, invited enemies and derision, and which we have initiated. The people of Iraq, and Saddam Hussein himself, have not asked us to go to war with them. Mysteriously, it's not a priority for them.

Even more mysteriously, it's seemingly become our overriding purpose as a nation. You can't go anywhere and not hear about it. On TV, on the radio, in the newspaper, the non-stop onslaught of coverage of this possible war against a weakened tyrant and people is constantly in play. Forced to give an opinion by the pollsters, fastly becoming more tiresome and meddling in popular culture than the tax collector, Americans indicate a preference for action. An illusion. Most people don't know the facts, don't really care one way or the other, and would surely rather quit hearing about it. You'd think the mind-numbing coverage and escalating gas prices would have assured overwhelming support for war by now, just so we can "get on with our lives", but it hasn't. Most mysteriously of all, masses are gathering in the streets, not answering the call of obedience, irrationality and war, but demanding peace, rationality and sanity. The herd! Acting with compassion and reason, demanding information before consent! The elites must be trembling in their slippers...

Meanwhile, our young American men and women are strapping on their combat boots and chem-warfare suits, preparing to engage in a war of which they can't possibly be passionate about. Why do I say this? There's a difference in what you hear, and what you know. And only the most clueless of the clueless would believe we're sacrificing human lives for the cause of the common Iraqi. For his freedom. Or hers. So anyone who's looking for reasons, to engage their reason, to determine the right thing to do, the moral course of action, will find nothing but ideology and fiction, speculation and threats, forgeries and plagiarism emanating from our most competent war orators. The mere presence of a plagiarized, decade-old student thesis, and the aforementioned Niger document forgery, as key references for our case is more telling than anything else. The plagiarized student claiming to have been able to give more updated information if he had been consulted only adds insult to injury.

This war is a fraud. Essential questions have not been answered. Who is going to die, and why? Will our fighting men and women kill with certainty, or with doubts? When does being a patriot mean defending freedom, and when does it mean being a fool? We don't know. So to the perpetrators of this absurdity the American people should issue one last ultimatum. Stand down, or face the shame of a nation.

Stand Down Or Face The Shame of a Nation

I don't think it was necessary to argue that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMD to argue against the invasion (nor did I think that in 2003 when I argued against invading even though I assumed Saddam Hussein had WMD http://tinyurl.com/2prgfn). Nor is it necessary to argue that he would never use them. It was sufficient to argue that he was less likely to use WMD than the people who would get their hads on them if we invaded -- Saddam's WMD not perfect but much better than Al Zarqawi's WMD. It was possible to argue that WMD would not be effectively secured if we invaded (I did so). Now there can be no doubt.

I think if there had been WMD in Iraq in 2003, they would have been used by al Qaeda in Iraq by now and doves would have no need for special pleading. I think the proof that the hawks were wrong would have been so strong that there would be no further debate. I, for one, only seriously thought about the possibility that invading Iraq might have been a good idea when I found out there were no WMD.

It's up to us to make sure that shame is faced.

I, for one, only seriously thought about the possibility that invading Iraq might have been a good idea when I found out there were no WMD.

Oh, do tell.

I think that 9/11 fucked with most everybody's head in a major way. It was a PTSD incident for the entire country. There was a thread and a good post here recently that talked about the chances of having a car wreck vs. the chances of being a victim of terrorism-and how it didn't make any sense. The poster mentioned that it is the *malicious INTENT* that makes all the difference. After 9/11 many of the so-called experts(not all) starting being unduly suspicious about any threats and over-generalized this to Saddam. It (9-11) basically just wigged out a bunch of otherwise level-headed people. I think this is the main source of the lapse of reason. The fear of "being wrong" certainly would have been greatly lessened if 9-11 hadn't occurred.

anatomist -- Spot on. There is far more to this than the obvious questions "Did you support going to war with Iraq?" or "Did you believe Hussein had WMD?". Unfortunately the more important questions get lost in the noise, as they involve what most people consider boring wonkery, can't be resolved in 30 minutes, and don't make for nice sound bites.

While Clemons, Yglesias, Atrios, Drum et. al. appear obsessed with the obvious questions, and the foreign policy establishment's response, I can only ask: What the hell did they have to say about the sea change in policy that allowed Iraq to happen? Answer: very little. Yet those debates were occuring in the same foreign policy establishment they deride.

What we see in Iraq is a symptom of a disease (the "Bush Doctrine") that has plagued this country's foreign policy since 2002, and if unchecked will yield far greater ill in the future than what we see in Iraq.

A couple points.

1. We really need to talk about a time line for this. Unwillingness to speak up in September 2002 was one thing but still not to speak up after Hans Blix's fruitless searchs (to sites given him by the U.S.)? The sudden urgency to 'sell' this war from August 2002 had me immediately suspicious. But if you didn't know by February that it was all (including most of the WMD claims) a lie you weren't paying attention and have no right to call yourself an 'expert'... ever.

2. Others have argued that conflating chemical, biological and nuclear weapons under the WMD blanket was a great ploy - and too many 'experts' are guilty here - but another (extremely) important concept in life is that of 'extent'. Outrageous claims were being made about the extent of Saddam's arsenal and here the timorous 'experts' could have at least squeaked out a few tsks, tsks they could now point to.

3. And where were the experts loudly declaiming some of the more outrageous claims? Condoleeza's "smoking mushroom clouds" and the pilotless drones capable of bringing WMDs to America's shores (and built by a country that now apparently can't make IEDs without Iranian help). Or do they see these obvious lies as yips and barks needed to herd national opinion.

4. I'll just note that the U.S. didn't invade Iraq in a manner that suggested it was fearful of attacks by WMDs.

but by refusing to say a little later 'we've got Saddam where we want him, subject to intrusive inspections supported by the int'l community and backed up by a credible threat of force--it would be crazy to go to war'.

You didn't have him where you wanted him in terms of oil. That is all that needs to be said.

...and second has407 on anatomist's post.

Kevin,

Read Fiasco and get back to me on how no one really thought Saddam didn't have an active WMD program. Turns out those infamous bombings we are always being told were just about getting attention off of Lewinsky pretty much wiped it out. Amazingly, plenty of actual experts were saying just that and the Very Serious People just ignored them.

It probably wouldn't hurt for those who comment wondering about why everyone speaks so well of Petreus to read it as well, for what it is worth.

Great essay, Kevin.
These were the self-styled elites, dictating public discourse/ readership--affecting influence.
As theorists, they protected US imperialists--manifested in the invasion/occupation of Iraq--
virtually spearheading that movement, along with the government.
With an A-Ok reception by the American public, due to its widespread emotional uncertainty.
Oh yes, they had a broad influence, and even embedded the design and the preferences.
I think it is more the deceit, the minimally contested concepts, or even the evaluative differences, let alone allowance for divergent theoretical ideas ----that doomed these think tanks.
There is a renewed disrespect for the virtue of reporting, for the compromises, the engagement.
Shame on them. You'd think they'd have thought of the human rights violations and exceptions, but, no--they went full speed ahead with the implementation of imperialistic foreign policy.
All in the name of 'nine eleven.'

I, for one, only seriously thought about the possibility that invading Iraq might have been a good idea when I found out there were no WMD.

Always comforting to find out my fellow citizens have no compunctions about the commission of war crimes.

Any reasonable person who listened to the "evidence" presented by Colin Powell to the UN General assembly (aluminum tubes etc.) should have been able to figure out that the evidence for WMDs was pretty thin. Besides, nobody claimed that even if Iraq had WMDs that it had a functioning delivery system.

We went to war with Iraq because we wanted to and because we could. Even if one had just read the much maligned NYT it was reasonably obvious that the case for war objectively, was not that strong.

"This meant that war skeptics had to go way out on a limb: if they opposed the war, and it subsequently turned out that Saddam had an advanced WMD program, their credibility would have been completely shot."

So, now, that the opposite has been proven, why hasn't the credibility of all the war hawks been shot????????????!!!!!!!!!!!

I second Mazurka - that really ought to be a two-way street, don't you think?

So, now, that the opposite has been proven...

What?!? Not until you've invaded Syria and every other country on the planet that teh WMDs could be magically whisked to... (and this whisking hither/thither undetected by your spy satellites) /snark

It's interesting that the first commenter here mentioned Scott Ritter and no one else has. Ritter - who voted Republican in 2000 - was fighting mad by the summer of 2002, arguing loudly and publicly that the WMD charges were essentially fabrications. Because of that, Kevin, I think you're wrong in saying that everyone believed Saddam had significant capacity to produce WMDs. Ritter didn't, and said so. And the Administration went after him with meat hooks. (That he turned out to have a thing for underage girls didn't help him.) But his treatment unquestionably gave pause to doves who disagreed with the Administration. If they were willing to go after someone of his professional expertise and caliber, what would they do to think tank pundits?

Re. Scott Ritter. The attempts to asperge his motivations didn't make any sense. No one would go through what he went merely cause they were on the take or because they wanted the chance to do business in Iraq. I couldn't see anything motivating Mr. Ritter other than sheer outrage. I paid a lot of attention to Mr. Ritter.

Kevin, I'm afraid that's nonsense.

First of all, it shouldn't matter what the apostates within the "foreign policy community" (FPC)said or didn't say. The fact is there were plenty of voices outside the FPC making quite cogent arguments against the war.

Given that a large minority of Americans had serious doubts about the war, the gatekeepers of our national discourse had every reason to find some of those voices, and let them get a word in edgewise. But they didn't.

And they still don't. The fact that nobody gave intelligent antiwar voices a platform at the time can at least kinda sorta be attributed to the hysteria of the time. I think that's a bullshit excuse, but even if you don't agree, I think we can all agree that the expiration date of that excuse was years ago.

That the FPC still shuts out those who were making good arguments against the war then, and who continue to make good arguments against staying the course now, demonstrates their corruption and worthlessness. They don't want a real debate. So screw 'em.

Second, as Frances said in the second comment in this thread:

2. Whether "WMD," meant to include chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, is a meaningful category. After all, ONLY nuclear weapons have ever been shown to be truly weapons of mass destruction. Conventional bombing campaigns do more damage than chemical and biological weapons do. Terrorists attacks using chemical weapons have never been all that impressively successful.

It was pretty damned clear at the time that Saddam didn't have nukes, and wasn't imminently about to get nukes. We assumed he had bio and chem weapons - but so freakin' what?? He couldn't even use them on the Kurds anymore, what with the no-fly zones. And even if he gave them to Al Qaeda (which was unlikely in the extreme), the likelihood that AQ was going to be able to use them as weapons of MASS destruction was minimal.

Even if one bought the argument that this war was about WMDs, we went to war to prevent one possible but unlikely route to another anthrax scare.

Goddamn, but that was dumb.

Yes the pro-war pundits do have chutzpah. Of course that's easier when being a pro-war pundit means never having to pay a price..

When has any pro-war pundit been Phil Donahued for being wrong?

Tell the Media to Stop Lying About Iraq and al-Qaeda
A. Alexander, July 12th, 2007
If by some small miracle someone missed it, the Bush administration and America's corporate-owned media are desperately trying to convince the people of the United States, that al Qaeda and not Sunni insurgents and Shiia militias is the primary force opposing Mister Bush's occupation of Iraq. That is a blatant lie. All the National Intelligence Estimates, including the one released this week, have consistently found 'foreign fighters' to account for only two and six percent of all forces in Iraq.

Why are the administration and the corporate-owned media desperately trying to convince everyone that Iraq is an al Qaeda safe haven? They hope once again, to con the American public into "staying the course" in Iraq. The people of the United States should not allow themselves to be swindled.

Intelligence estimates place the total number of insurgents in Iraq, to be approximately 20,000. Giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt and assuming 'foreign fighters' to account for six percent of Iraq's anti-American forces, that means there could only be 1,200 members of al Qaeda in that country. That leaves 18,800 Sunni and Shiia fighters. According to American Generals and military reports the US has, since the latest surge began, killed or captured several hundred so-called al Qaeda fighters. At best there could only be a few hundred remaining in Iraq.

Studied evidence aside, common sense dictates that 'al Qaeda' couldn't possibly account for a majority of the violence in Iraq. What to do? Well, that is up to the American people. If they don't mind being lied to, they can do nothing. If, however, they have some semblance of self-respect and personal dignity, they could use the links below to contact the major corporate news networks and tell them to stop lying about Iraq and al Qaeda.

It's up to the people. They can control their world and reality, or let the liars do it for them.

When writing, mention that EVERY intelligence estimate has pegged the number of 'foreign fighters' in Iraq, to be between only two-to-six percent of the forces opposing the US occupation. Ask the corporate-owned news agency if they intend to continue spinning for the administration and lying to the people or if, as a supposed news agency, they will begin reporting the facts?

It might be worthwhile to quote a recent McClatchy report regarding the latest National Intelligence Estimate, released just this week:

"Bush, facing growing pressure to change policy from key Republican senators, many of whom face re-election next year, has blamed the worsening violence on al Qaida in Iraq, a Sunni terrorist group inspired by Osama bin Laden. But the new report repeats a January intelligence assessment that the conflict is a 'self-sustaining sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunnis' for which al Qaida in Iraq attacks have served as 'effective accelerants.'"

It is up to the American people. Allow the corporate media to continue lying, or demand that they stop.

Jesus Christ, Kevin. Quit covering your ass. The cost of invading Iraq, even if Saddam had WMD, was always going to be greater than the benefits. He was not a serious threat, and we were, as Dick Cheney knew, going into a quagmire. I was an agnostic about WMD's (moving to disbeliever after inspections found nothing), but even so it was clear that invasion was idiocy. Idiocy. And so it has come to pass.

Dick Cheney knew it and went ahead. Idiocy.

Many people believed HANS BLIX and the U.N. team of inspectors!
To say otherwise isn't right.

I'm not a VSP, but I thought that Saddam was highly unlikely to have biological weapons, and flat-out didn't have nuclear weapons. I was willing to concede some possibility of chemical weapons, but those are the least dangerous of the so-called WMDs.

Right after Powell's speech, I had an old email correspondent of mine in the UK, an old-time labor activist, sending me the info that undercut that reliability of that speech. My friend said flat out that he thought there were no WMDs at all.

I suspect there were plenty of people like Ritter (and Joseph Wilson) around. But it was like the 2000 election. The MSM and the corporate powers then had already decided that they didn't like Gore and they weren't going to give him a break no matter what. And this time they'd decided that the Bushies were still the kewl kids. Ritter, Wilson and anyone else who dared to oppose the rush to war were nerds or troublemakers or perverts or whatever else they could manage to throw at them.

The sad fact is, we will forgive them for being wrong, eventually. But they will NEVER,/b> forgive us for being right.

As proof, I offer the Vietnam example. They are still pissed off that we were right then, and will be to their dying day.

So fuck the foam-flecked loons. Mock them, deride them and humiliate them at every turn. They are a rabid minority, worthy only of scorn and derision. Don't let them get away with it this time. There is a time and a place for rehab and understanding, but this is not it. Fucking fight back.

Way too late to this party, but...

KD claims that it is a "plain fact" that "nearly everyone...believed Saddam was developing WMDs". But how do we know this? Yes, they said (with more or less enthusiasm) that he probably had them, but if people could be too cowardly to speak out against the war, surely they could be too cowardly to express their doubts about the existence of WMDs too. The "research" KD advocates would only prove that, inasmuch as liberals talked about WMDs, they granted that they probably existed. That doesn't prove that those liberals weren't granting that out of expediency, rather than because they believed it.

The main thing is, the "fear of being provably wrong" holds even more strongly for anyone claiming there are no WMDs, than for those claiming the war will go badly.

Also, the double-standard should be pointed out here. Why were those who feared the war would go wrong, or those who might have claimed there were no WMDs, more at risk of being proven wrong than those on the other side? By pure logic, both sides should have been equally afraid of making factual claims. Yet clearly one side wasn't -- and rightfully so, since their claims were all disproven and nevertheless, little harm to their careers was done.

I think there's a bigger problem with media types, bloggers, whatnot - wannabe pundits who's biggest dream is to sell out.

But let's talk about the foreign service.

What Kevin Drum writes really is the height of gall:
My own view is a little different, though. Sure, the war skeptics might have been afraid to go against the herd, but I think that was just an outgrowth of something more concrete: a fear of being provably wrong. After all, everyone agreed that Saddam Hussein was a brutal and unpredictable thug and almost everyone agreed that he had an active WMD program. (Note: Please do some research first if you want to disagree with this. The plain fact is that nearly everyone — liberal and conservative, American and European, George Bush and Al Gore — believed Saddam was developing WMDs. This unanimity started to break down when the UN inspections failed to turn up anything, but before that you could count the number of genuine WMD doubters on one hand.) This meant that war skeptics had to go way out on a limb: if they opposed the war, and it subsequently turned out that Saddam had an advanced WMD program, their credibility would have been completely shot. Their only recourse would have been to argue that Saddam never would have used his WMD, an argument that, given Saddam's temperament, would have sounded like special pleading even to most liberals. In the end, then, they chickened out, but it had more to do with fear of being wrong than with fear of being shunned by the foreign policy community.

At any rate, it would be instructive to find out who these closet doves were and invite them to a Foreign Affairs roundtable to talk about why they knuckled under to the hawks prior to the war. To the extent they were willing to be honest, it would be a pretty interesting conversation. I won't be holding my breath, though.

The heads of the rising stars on the leftwing blogosphere were so turned by the attention they were getting that they apparently immersed themselves in the neocons' "conventional wisdom" about Saddam's WMD and nuclear capability.

You were a tool, Kevin, and before you go looking to others for honesty, look to yourself.

Below are just a few well known facts about the lies put forth by the chickenhawks that got drowned out by those on the left willing to play with the neocons and their war:

May 1, 2007:

RAY McGOVERN (ex-CIA analyst, briefer to George H.W. Bush): [George Tenet] got a whole bunch of things wrong, OK? Last night on Larry King, he was talking abo