In a more reasonable environment
Mona Charen:
"With David Kay's testimony on the fruitless search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the time has come for an accounting.
"In a more reasonable environment, politicians and opinion-makers would absorb the new facts and make the needed reforms. Reasonable people cannot avoid the conclusion that our intelligence agencies were badly mistaken.
"But are the Democrats reasonable? Their preposterous interpretation of events has become mainstream. It goes as follows. No stockpiles of WMDs were found in Iraq therefore: a) George W. Bush knew that there were none to be found and b) took the nation to war on false pretenses.
"Let's examine the logic. The Democrats claim that Bush wanted war in spite of the fact that there were no WMDs. Why? To put himself in political jeopardy when this fact was discovered? And if he knew that there were no WMDs, why did he speak about them so often and so forcefully? Also, how many times must we remind the Democrats that the president never argued that the threat was 'imminent?' He urged, to the contrary, that it would be reckless to wait until a threat was imminent.
"But the most amazing thing about the Democrats' argument is its glaring disregard of very recent history. Everyone -- the Democrats, the French, the Republicans, the Clinton administration, the Russians, the United Nations Security Council -- believed that Saddam had stockpiles of WMDs. It wasn't disputed by anyone...."
Mona Charen:
"With David Kay's testimony on the fruitless search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the time has come for an accounting.
"In a more reasonable environment, politicians and opinion-makers would absorb the new facts and make the needed reforms. Reasonable people cannot avoid the conclusion that our intelligence agencies were badly mistaken.
"But are the Democrats reasonable? Their preposterous interpretation of events has become mainstream. It goes as follows. No stockpiles of WMDs were found in Iraq therefore: a) George W. Bush knew that there were none to be found and b) took the nation to war on false pretenses.
"Let's examine the logic. The Democrats claim that Bush wanted war in spite of the fact that there were no WMDs. Why? To put himself in political jeopardy when this fact was discovered? And if he knew that there were no WMDs, why did he speak about them so often and so forcefully? Also, how many times must we remind the Democrats that the president never argued that the threat was 'imminent?' He urged, to the contrary, that it would be reckless to wait until a threat was imminent.
"But the most amazing thing about the Democrats' argument is its glaring disregard of very recent history. Everyone -- the Democrats, the French, the Republicans, the Clinton administration, the Russians, the United Nations Security Council -- believed that Saddam had stockpiles of WMDs. It wasn't disputed by anyone...."
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