Did We Lose in Iraq? No, and Here’s Why.
Michael J. Totten
This article is an essay published in the The New Republic that I think is worth a read. As that The New Republic is liberal leaning you would expect the comments on the article to be all hostile towards the thesis of the article. Amazingly not all of the comments are hostile and I think as a whole they make for an interesting read.
Most commenter's believe the war was wrong mostly because Saddam didn't have the Weapons of Mass Destruction upon which much of the justification for the war was made. Saddam didn't have the weapons, therefore there was no threat, and so the whole thing was nothing but a huge mistake.
I have one question:
How do we know Saddam didn't have the weapons?
Answer: We know he didn't have the weapons, because we went to war and so the question was once and for all definitively answered. I think it is clear in the aftermath of the war that before the war we didn't have much of a clue as to the status of Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction and WMD programs. I think we were pretty certain Saddam was cheating, and there is no doubt at this point that he was in fact cheating on his obligations; We had no clue how much or how little.
One of the lessons of 9/11 that seems to have been forgotten at this point is that what we don't know can suddenly result in the death of a lot of people and do untold billions of dollars in damage. The burden of proof to show Saddam did not have WMD's was on Saddam and Saddam only. He most certainly did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he in fact didn't have WMD's. Saddam played games as if he was guilty of hiding things and we know he was hiding things but they just happened to be minor rather than major. In 20/20 hindsight critics claim Bush acted rashly and recklessly, but I see just the opposite. He erred on the side of caution because the risk of erring on the side of catastrophe was just to great as the lesson of 9/11 so violently showed
