The Italian Jesuit magazine Civilta Cattolica, whose editorials are passed through the Vatican Secretariat of State claims that the war in Iraq was not morally justified. Their reasoning? Well, a whole month later we haven’t foundany weapons of mass destruction! Excuse me, but weren’t these the same people saying that a decade’s worth of inspections weren’t enough time? Iraq’s a big country and the regime had plenty of time to hide the weapons and destroy evidence pointing to its existence. It will take time to find it. If we still have nothing in six months, then I’ll worry, but not yet.
For one thing, I don’t look at extreme lefty The Nation as a reliable source for anything. And he didn’t mislead anyone about Saddam-al Qaida links since those have been proven as well, most recently in those documents that showed Saddam and bin Laden setting up meetings to discuss ways or working together, as well as the terrorist camps that were destroyed and the terrorists who were found fighting for Saddam.
Like I said, it’s only been a month, and we don’t even know what’s been found because there has been no official statement about it. We only have media leaks and speculation.
And no I don’t think Bush played anyone for suckers because that would pre-suppose that he had other motives for taking down Iraq and I don’t buy any of the ones that have been advanced by the anti-Bush crowd.
The claim that we “secured the oil ministry” has been demonstrated as a myth. The Army set up a checkpoint of a few soldiers on the street near the building, just as they set up checkpoints around the city. The looting of the National Museum and library were also demonstrated to be myths. I covered that in a post within the last week or so.
That is why I take news articles about the so-called lack of enthusiasm to find WMD or their supposed non-existence with a grain of salt. So many things presented by the media since the war began have proved to be false so their claims notwithstanding now, I’m not worried that the president is going to be “proved wrong.”
Does anybody else feel like this thread is going in rhetorical circles? One side says not enough time has passed for us to be certain that there were no WMDs in violation of the 1991 ceasefire and several UN resolutions and the other side says, we don’t see any WMDs, therefore there was no imminent danger.
In the end, none of those arguments matter since, by definition, I think this was a “defensive” just war. Defensive? Yep, because it was not a new war, but the continuation of the 1991 war which was launched to repulse an invasion, and therefore just by definition. Iraq didn’t abide by the terms of the ceasefire so combat was continued 12 years later. Enough said.