October 07, 2004

Post Defends Bush

The Washington Post editorial page understands that hindsight is always 20-20, and that to properly evaluate a decision we must understand the information known at the time. On Iraq and WMD they write (emphasis mine):

In the meantime the report will surely fuel the debate between Mr. Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry about whether the war should have been undertaken. The two have staked out dramatically contrasting positions, focusing on a theoretical question: If the president had known what the Iraq Survey Group now reports, would he have been right to order an invasion? Mr. Bush says he would have made the same decision; Mr. Kerry says he would not have. Yet in reality no president could have known what is known now. As long as Saddam Hussein remained in power and refused to cooperate fully with the United Nations, there could have been no certainty about his weapons. Mr. Bush had to decide whether the risks of invading outweighed those of standing pat without knowing for sure what U.S. forces would find in Iraq or what would happen once they were there.

There's a difference between lying and being wrong. The President and "most other Western intelligence agencies" were the latter. (An interesting question from the Bush bashers would be "After the intelligence failure of 09.11.01 why did the President have faith in them when it came to Saddam's WMD?) MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and Kerry Edwards cannot simply use the lack of WMD to prove Bush lied. They must find some evidence that Bush knew there weren't WMD but said there were anyway. They must then explain (with evidence) why it would be politically smart for Bush to take the country to war. The anti-Bushies can't do either so instead they should "Bush lied, people died!" and use the Halliburton smear.

"Weapons That Weren't There" [via Viking Pundit]