What Took Them So Long?

The Chicago Tribune debunks the Bush lied meme. Too bad it took them this long to get around to doing it. And the facts are that on some of those issues, the verdict is out whether exaggerations took place or that we're still in an information gathering phase. Does anyone honestly think that Saddam wouldn't try to destroy evidence of his ties to international terrorists like al Qaeda or bury his WMD programs (or ship them out of the country?)

On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others. We predicted that this exercise would distress the smug and self-assured--those who have unquestioningly supported, or opposed, this war.

The matrix below summarizes findings from the resulting nine editorials. We have tried to bring order to a national debate that has flared for almost three years. Our intent was to help Tribune readers judge the case for war--based not on who shouts loudest, but on what actually was said and what happened.

The administration didn't advance its arguments with equal emphasis. Neither, though, did its case rely solely on Iraq's alleged illicit weapons. The other most prominent assertion in administration speeches and presentations was as accurate as the weapons argument was flawed: that Saddam Hussein had rejected 12 years of United Nations demands that he account for his stores of deadly weapons--and also stop exterminating innocents. Evaluating all nine arguments lets each of us decide which ones we now find persuasive or empty, and whether President Bush tried to mislead us.

Count on the fact that the anti-Administration folks are going to weigh some of those issues more heavily than others. They're going to scream and yell that Bush lied about the WMD and the terrorist threat, but the fact is that Saddam did harbor international terrorists, it did aid and abet international terrorist groups, though most operated against Israel, not against the US. Saddam did seek to obtain WMD, but the final verdict on his capabilities may yet be written. There are still details that have not been fleshed out - the convoys of trucks heading into the Syrian Beka'a Valley from Iraq and years worth of reports that Iraq was developing and constituting a WMD program.