Keith Devens .com

Hitchens writes:

But then there is the really superb pedantry and literal-mindedness on which the remainder of the case depends.

And goes on to easily slay Milbank and Pincus (very poor) point:

The October 2002 joint resolution authorized the use of force in Iraq, but it did not directly mention the removal of Hussein from power.

Hutchens wraps it up with a preposterous strawman:

the INC was able to manipulate the combined intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the CIA, the DIA, and the NSA, who between them employ perhaps 1.4 million people, and who in the American case dispose of an intelligence budget of $44 billion, with only a handful of Iraqi defectors and an operating budget of $320,000 per month. That's what you have to believe. ... A few little strokes of Occam's razor are enough to dispose of this whole accumulation of fantasy.

Keith-- you have strong logic skills and know that this article is extremely-- laughably weak. Hutchens adds practically no information to the debate-- only his smug, dismissive "perspective." I'm not berating you for posting it; I'm glad I read it, if only for a laugh. I hope you agree that this opinion piece does nothing for either side of the debate. Right wingers can argue far far better than that.

I only just started the article and didn't finish it. So I have no opinion yet. However, to me the "Bush lied" meme has always fallen apart on one simple logical point. If Bush intentionally lied (somehow fooling everybody else in the process) he'd have done so knowing he'd be found out. The psychology that would have to be behind that is completely implausible to me.

I don't really know if Bush knowingly lied or not. I'm sure he trusted his advisors, and he really was biased toward invasion for a whole host of reasons. So Bush may have truly believed all of the reasons for invading, whereas his cabinet knowingly fudged the case.

Those folks all expected us to be greeted as liberators, and they were sure in their gut that they'd find WMDs of some kind. So no matter what fibs were told to get us there, once either of those two things happened, there would be no reason to go back and re-examine the case for war.

Of course, neither of the two expectations were met, and this came back to haunt them. It's one thing to gamble and invade a country based on scant evidence, and quite another to do so and be shown to be wrong. An error of this magnitude is what makes this so astonishing.

You might appreciate the following discussion: http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2005/1...ntelligence-inquiry-initiative-1.html