Michael Hurt and Richardson, with an assist from GI Korea, have exchanged posts and comments concerning the issue of partisan revisionism on the topic of WMD in Iraq before the Iraq War commenced.  Michael Hurt relates, "There are a lot of people like me, who always thought (and still do) that there wasn't enough justification to go to Iraq."  Richardson responds, "My response to that was that the reason most people (referring to Americans, in this case) were against the invasion of Iraq is that they believed our troops would be decimated by WMD."  GI Korea states, "To this day I have not seen anything to change my mind that Bush knew there was no WMD in Iraq.  I believe Bush legitimately believed there was WMD in Iraq, but he didn’t decide to wage the war simply for WMD." Both Richardson and GI Korea accuse opponents of the war of revisionism.

Both Michael Hurt and Richardson present compelling evidence. The only source I would dispute is the one Richardson puts so much store in, the New York Times.  The Gray Lady often does a disservice in its vaunted capacity as America's newspaper of record, and the July 16, 2004 editorial Richardson quotes is a prime example. But, exploiting the Gray Lady's changeability is itself sophomoric. Hardball and Scarborough Country are both entertaining and usually informative, but neither Richardson and the Gray Lady are even remotely that. So, I went to my paper of record, The Economist, and searched in the archives for editorials from late 2001 to early 2003. I remind readers that The Economist supported the Bush administration's decision in the Iraq War, and also endorsed his presidential candidacy twice.

Where Should Mr Bush Put His Chips Now? (11/22/01)

So “phase two� of Mr Bush's war is the Middle-Eastern peace process? Not if the so-called neo-conservatives have anything to do with it. “Phase two,� writes Tom Donnelley, in the Weekly Standard, “is a euphemism for Iraq. As the campaign in Afghanistan has progressed, a consensus has emerged that it is high time to remove Saddam Hussein from power.�

That may be a slight exaggeration. Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence and the man who in the past has argued most forcibly for Saddam's overthrow, has been cautious, arguing that “Saddam Hussein is one of [a number of leaders supporting terrorism] but not the only one.� At a conference in Geneva, John Bolton, the under-secretary of state for arms control, took the unusual step of naming Iraq for illegally building biological weapons—but he named five other countries, too.

This more guarded language is very similar to that used by some Democrats. For example, Joe Lieberman has argued that “[Saddam] has got the means—chemical, biological, working on nuclear—and the motive. He will do us terrible damage unless we do him out of power.�

The idea that Iraq is the logical phase two is usually associated with the Pentagon; and supposed to be anathema at the State Department. But that view may be wrong. On November 7th, Mr Powell said this: “Nations such as Iraq, which have tried to possess weapons of mass destruction, should not think that we will not be concerned about those activities and will not turn our attention to them.� The State Department has also been quietly forging closer political ties with exiled Iraqi military officers.

Encouraging the peace process and attacking Iraq are not necessarily alternatives. Arguably, they could complement one another: Arab support for the peace process could mitigate the regimes' likely (public) hostility to an attack on an Arab state. But the chances are surely that most Arab leaders would shun any American-led peace effort, at least while war was being waged. So the administration would have to assume that attacking Iraq would hamper efforts to find a settlement between Israel and Palestine.

The real question, then, is should America try to overthrow Saddam Hussein? The political dynamic appears to be in favour. Politicians of all stripes support the idea. Almost all the pressure in America during the war on Afghanistan was for more force, not less. One poll, for example, found that nearly as many people thought the attacks on the Taliban were not strong enough (41%) as thought they were about right (47%). That suggests the public could be receptive to arguments in favour of a second front. And there is a political consensus that Saddam is not merely, in the words of Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, “a bad actor�, but a possible threat to national security.

Yet those who have to think about how in practice to remove the beast from Baghdad are much more sceptical. Career diplomats might be thought congenitally incapable of planning a war against anyone. But both the CIA and the generals (including Mr Zinni, Mr Powell's envoy) are also notably unenthusiastic desert warriors. The reason for this divide is that the two groups, politicians on the one hand, planners and diplomats on the other, have drawn different conclusions from the war in Afghanistan.

For the “remove Saddam� crowd, the lesson is that a repressive power, however strong it may look, will crumble under American bombing and popular resentment. American military backing transformed a rabble on horseback into an effective fighting force. And the lesson from the attacks on September 11th is also clear. If your sworn enemy can launch massive strikes against you, he will. As Richard Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon's defence policy board, puts it, “I would hate to see us having this debate after another terrible attack on America.�

The diplomats and planners, on the other hand, argue that the Iraqi opposition, especially the main organisation, the Iraqi National Congress, cannot be compared to the Northern Alliance. They have no military bases to operate from. They are not supported by any neighbouring power.

And the pragmatists also dispute the lesson from September 11th. Unlike Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein has a return address and can be deterred from using weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, the planners and generals fear that an attack on Iraq would increase the chance that these weapons might be used—by Saddam himself or by al-Qaeda, if he gave them the arms as a last resort.

So, point for Richardson, as far as elite public opinion goes. What about mass public opinion?

Vox Populi, Vox Belli (11/29/01)

It is not clear what the perpetrators of September 11th's acts of terror hoped to achieve. But if it was to demoralise the American people and force their government to shy away from further action in the Middle East, it has not worked. That is the clear conclusion from polling evidence gathered by Gallup for a symposium in Washington, DC.

The evidence of resilience can be found in almost every survey. Most Americans were profoundly moved after September 11th. Seven in ten of them reported feeling depressed; six said they cried; five had trouble sleeping. But, although most people expected more attacks, they have made a conscious attempt to return to normal. By mid-October, one Gallup poll found 89% of Americans say that they were “going about their business as usual�. Only one in a hundred has gone out to buy a gun. And, despite the media storm about anthrax in October, an ABC/Washington Post poll at the end of that month found that 92% thought their mail was safe.

Bill Schneider, a political analyst with CNN, characterises the current mood as one of “defiant optimism�. Americans are rallying round the symbols of national unity—particularly George Bush (see chart). Some 67% approve of the way that the country, both at war and in recession, is going. A determination not to let the bastards grind you down may play a part; so too may the discovery that America is not just a land of self-absorbed baby-boomers, but of patriots and heroes as well.

The figures make mixed reading for civil libertarians. Four out of five Americans are willing to sacrifice some freedoms for the sake of greater security, 77% support a national identity card and 64% back military tribunals for terrorist suspects. But clear majorities also oppose allowing the government to monitor people's telephone calls and e-mails, and allowing the police to stop and search people at random. Most people object to picking on Arab-Americans: 57% support requiring all residents to carry an ID card, compared with 49% who back confining it to Arabs.

For America's generals, the figures are unambiguously good. Backing for military action remains as high as it was just after September 11th, at almost 90% of the population. Support for the war is even strong among groups that have traditionally had pacifist leanings, such as women (84% in favour) and “liberals� (77%).

This backing is not conditional on an easy victory. A solid 94% of Americans expect the war to be difficult. The latest figures show 61% willing to use ground troops even if thousands of Americans are killed. There are big majorities for using troops even if it increases the chances of retaliation (87%) or means higher taxes (84%) or a petrol shortage (79%).

Watching body bags come home is very different from telling pollsters you are willing to take casualties

For those now seeking to expand the war on terrorism, the polls offer plenty of encouragement. Some 92% expect a long war. (The comparable figure after Pearl Harbour was only 51%.) No less than 56% would be willing to see combat forces used for more than five years if necessary. Virtually half, 49%, say they favour a broader war, compared with 43% who want to limit the war to punishing those responsible for September 11th. In a new Washington Post poll 78% back using American troops to topple Saddam Hussein.

Like all polls, the research is a snapshot, not a predictor. There is a big difference between telling pollsters that you are willing to take casualties and actually watching the body bags coming home every night—particularly if Osama bin Laden himself were to have been killed.

But two things could check the natural tendency for support to erode over time. One is the degree of international support America enjoys. Ever since Vietnam, Americans have been worried about going it alone in foreign policy. Some 95% deem it very important for the war against terrorism to be a collective effort of many countries; 85% favour working through the United Nations. The other thing is leadership. Mr Bush has been remarkably successful at shaping public opinion, on everything from how long the war is likely to last to embracing Arab-Americans.

From the beginning there was division within the Bush administration.

Stage One Almost Done, Time to Start Planning Stage Two (12/6/01)

This week, America took its first small step to broaden its actions beyond al-Qaeda when it seized the assets of three charities which, it claimed, were financing the attacks of Hamas on Israel. They included one of America's largest Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation in Texas. But the action is in some ways a red herring, related as much to American policy in the Middle East as to phase two in the broader war on terror. In planning for that, the administration is now trying to get the sequencing right.

Senior officials distinguish between two categories of country: those they want to make an example of through military force, and those that they want to turn into models of good behaviour. Afghanistan is clearly in the first category. So, on the face of it, is Somalia—another warlord-ridden place with al-Qaeda camps on its wild border with Kenya. But poor Somalia is in an even worse mess than Afghanistan. Its 84-member government (which was barely worth the name) has just resigned, so although American military action might be needed to get rid of al-Qaeda's operations there, no Somali equivalent of the Taliban exists to blame or attack.

The best example in this category is, of course, Iraq, though the evidence that it supports global terror is sketchy (see next page). For the moment, however, an attack on Iraq is barely being discussed, and the administration seems to have decided on a different procedure for the next phase of the war: finding models of better behaviour. As Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, described phase two to the Washington Post: “We are willing to work with states that want to do better in making sure their territory and assets are not used for the purposes of terrorism.�

The possibility that Hussein possessed the intent to use WMD was never disputed, only the conclusions drawn were controvertible.

Unfinished Business (12/6/01)

How bad would it be for Mr Hussein to acquire the nuclear or biological weapons he craves? His would not be the first nuclear-armed dictatorship; and Stalin's was surely no less mad, bad or dangerous. In North Korea, the West has relied on deterrence-cum-incentives to keep a potential nuclear menace at bay. Mr Hussein, admittedly, has shown that he is reckless as well as ruthless. He invaded Iran; he invaded Kuwait; and he fired missiles at Tel Aviv even though he knew Israel to have the bomb already. But he can also be deterred: he never dared to use his chemical weapons against the Israelis or Americans. Besides, say some of those who counsel deterrence, an oil-rich and technically advanced country such as Iraq will one day join the expanding nuclear club no matter who is president. Why risk war now to stave off the inevitable?

These are strong arguments. But most depend on the idea that removing Mr Hussein before he acquires his weapons of mass destruction would entail many risks: a price in American lives, the possibility of leaving Iraq even worse off and the danger of destabilising America's friends in the Middle East. Before September 11th, it was accepted that these unavoidable costs outweighed the possible benefits. Now, some Americans have concluded from the terror attacks on New York that their own power does not deter every vengeful or fanatical foe, and they have concluded from events in Afghanistan that America can win wars far from home without paying a heavy butcher's bill. As much gruesome history attests, the last war is seldom a reliable guide to the next.

A year later, as war became likelier, the stakes started to change.

Seeing Through Iraq (12/12/02)

Much is sometimes made of the difficulties of fighting in the desert heat, which starts in March. But the principal argument for haste has more to do with momentum than with the weather. There is little more that America can now do to steady its allies. And by choosing to work through the Security Council, offering Iraq a final chance to come clean about its weapons, Mr Bush put himself in the position of having to respond once Saddam answered. Hans Blix, for the inspectors, has yet to deliver his own verdict on whether Iraq is co-operating. But the main news is in: Saddam's answer to this final chance is to deny having forbidden weapons. Since neither the Americans nor the British believe this, the logical next step is to reconvene the council as they promised, show that Saddam is lying, and—though both countries deny that they need this legally—seek support for disarming Iraq by force.

When they ask for support, will they receive it? Almost everything now depends on the quality of the evidence. Though none of the other permanent members of the Security Council wants a war, none would find one easy to obstruct if it were plain that Iraq had again spun a tissue of lies. By the same token, a move to war based on weak evidence will be a lonely and unpopular affair. If Britain and America did not have the hard dope to convict Iraq, they should never have taken an approach that turns on a battle of dossiers.

A new element had entered the game, the 2002 midterm elections, and the momentum going into the 2004 general elections. The polls revealed that economic issues were on the top of voters' minds.  The Democratic candidates walked a fine line between support for the "war on terror" and economic issues.  But, the Democrats lost, lending force to the left's contention that the party needed to return to its base.

After Al (12/19/02)

The immediate effect may be a little messy. If Mr Gore had stayed, the race would have been all about giant-killing. John Kerry, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts who announced his candidacy a little over a week ago, was probably best placed to land the killer blow. Now everything is up in the air. Expect a dozen or more leading Democrats to announce their names in the next few weeks, including John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman (now released from his pledge not to run against Mr Gore) and perhaps Tom Daschle. And then expect them to spend months jostling with each other.

Intellectually, too, things could get more fractious. Mr Lieberman's entry into the race is likely to make the Democrats at last engage in a real debate about their position on the war against terror. So far most of them have pussyfooted around issues like Iraq. The typical candidate offers a bland statement of support for the president's aims (which goes down well with ordinary Americans), then quickly picks a couple of holes in his actual plans (which pleases liberals), before changing the subject to something more congenial, such as free pills for pensioners.

Mr Lieberman is the exception: a foreign-policy heavyweight who has relentlessly pushed for tough action against Saddam Hussein and offered relatively detailed ways of doing it. This may not help him in the primaries, where Democratic voters tend to be more leftish. But his presence may push the other candidates into producing something more than evasive banalities.

From this point until the start of the Iraq War, including Secretary of State Colin Powell's UN appearance demonstrating the existence of WMD, American public opinion had split into the "Three Thirds": one-third of Americans would support President Bush unequivocally; another third wouldn't believe him for any reason; and, one third were waiting for concrete proof of WMD.

Burden of Proof (02/06/03)

Mr Powell's forceful rehearsal of the existing case against Mr Hussein will probably strengthen the conviction of those who say that Iraq's dictator poses a mortal danger to his region and the world, and so cannot be allowed to keep the deadly weapons America and Britain say he possesses. But the people and governments who never accepted this case in the first place will seize on the absence of any wholly clinching new evidence. Why has no western intelligence service published direct photographs of prohibited missiles or mass-killing weapons? How come America has not been able to guide the UN inspectors to any serious incriminating find on the ground? After a dozen years of Iraqi delinquency, shouldn't the spies of the CIA or Mossad have been able to wire the whole country up like an experimental rat? Why believe the defectors who tell America that they have seen mobile weapons labs that are invisible to western agents? And so forth. Although Mr Powell's evidence should not be set at nought—his satellite photos and intercepts suggest to any reasonable observer that Iraq has something to hide—America has failed to prove beyond doubt to a sceptical world that it has the weapons the Security Council has prohibited it from having.

Does this failure demolish America's case for war? Hardly. A sceptic may be entitled to wonder why western intelligence has not yet produced stronger new evidence about the present location of Iraq's proscribed weapons. But it takes either a fool or a knave to swallow Mr Hussein's countervailing plea that he has none. Logic, and a veritable mountain of circumstantial evidence, point the other way.

If Mr Hussein has nothing to hide, why did he put up with economic sanctions, forfeiting billions instead of co-operating with the previous inspection regime in order to end them? Iraq's systematic deception of the first lot of inspectors sent to disarm it after the Gulf war is a matter of record, not conjecture. Iraq placed so many obstacles in front of these inspectors that they withdrew in 1998. Now the Iraqis maintain that, having pushed the inspectors out, they voluntarily destroyed all the chemical and biological munitions they had worked so hard to conceal—and kept no record of how and when they had done so. It is not only the Americans who consider this account incredible. It is only a week, remember, since Hans Blix, the chief inspector himself, told the Security Council that Iraq even now had not genuinely accepted the UN's 12-year-old instruction to disarm, reiterated unanimously last November in Resolution 1441. Without Iraq's active co-operation, he said, the inspectors could not verify that it had disarmed by playing “catch as catch can�. A country with Iraq's record deserves no presumption of innocence.

This week's drama in the Security Council does not mean that the search for evidence is over. A lucky break or a tip-off could still help the inspectors to catch the Iraqis red-handed. But with an army mustering on Iraq's borders, the Americans will not play this game for long. Mr Blix's next report to the Security Council is due on February 14th, and may be the last he is allowed to make before George Bush begins the countdown to war. Fighting might be postponed if Mr Hussein made a convincing last-minute decision to offer the inspectors the active co-operation he has so far withheld. Failing that, the only big question that remains is whether the war will be fought with the explicit authority of the Security Council, under a new resolution, or by a narrow coalition without one.

It is in this period that the Bush administration committed its error. Without experiencing any pressure from Democrats for proof, the Bush administration went forward with a bad battle plan, and did not plan for the aftermath.

After Iraq (05/29/03)

In reality, Mr Bush has done no more than point up how the Security Council has undermined its own authority over the years by failing to oblige Saddam to disarm as he should have done. And, whatever they may now do, neither Iran nor North Korea owes its recent big nuclear strides to anger at Mr Bush, but to technology and know-how acquired well before he came to office. A likelier spur to their weapons building was learning just how close Iraq had come to a bomb of its own before the first Gulf war, without anyone knowing—and then realising that, even if they got caught, the Security Council lacked the courage of its own resolutions.

Few would argue that military force is anything but the least bad of the options now left for dealing with Iraq (the worse one being to leave Mr Hussein armed and defiant). Yet its effect could be more beneficial than gloomsters expect. Stemming the spread of weapons of mass destruction depends on driving up costs to would-be proliferators, and driving down benefits that acquiring such weapons is expected to bring. By taking on Iraq, America is demonstrating to other nuclear wannabes how high the price of rule-breaking can be. Before that demonstration effect wears off, the Americans should take active steps to promote an idea, rehearsed in the past but never acted on: the exploration of a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the region.

Pie in the sky? Many other ambitious diplomatic efforts would have to fall into place first, not least the prospect of a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. And even the less adventurous first steps—confidence-building measures to reduce the level of tension—would be far from easy. Yet the disarming of Iraq will change the balance of power in a way that could help others to disarm.

For years ringed by populous enemies bent on its destruction, and outnumbered in every sort of weapon but one—the nuclear sort—Israel has seen that nuclear edge steadily eroded by the spread of chemical-tipped missiles among its neighbours. In the 1990s, better relations with Jordan and Egypt, along with the collapse of the Soviet Union, chief armourer to the hardliners, started some Israelis wondering whether their security was best assured by unilateral action or regional arms control. Bombing Iraq's nuclear reactor back in 1981, they noted, had delayed Saddam's bomb-building, not ended it—and a strike now against Iran's uranium-enrichment facilities might be no more decisive. Meanwhile, the disarming of Iraq removes one more of Israel's dangerously implacable foes.

Any security regime worth pursuing, even an initially modest one, would have to rope in hostile Libya and Iran too. Both have nuclear ambitions, though Iran is the closer to realising them. Yet Iraq's weapons have posed more of a threat to Iran than Israel's, and will soon be gone. And the forcible means of their going will demonstrate to Iran, as much as anyone, the scale of the nuclear risks it now runs.

Might it be too soon to be rethinking the security map of the Middle East? Far from it. That is, if next time the task is to be done peaceably.

The last two pieces of the historical evolution from overwhelming support for the Bush administration to its current impotence was, firstly, the seemingly endless revelations of administration incompetence and bureaucratic infighting concerning Iraq, documented by Bob Woodward in his three books on the Bush administration, and the polarizing candidacy of Howard Dean. Dean's near win made it acceptable for leftists to proclaim their prescient lack of support for the Iraq War.

For my part, I supported the Iraq War as an acceptable gamble, as GI Korea puts it, "a war of choice", to end the debate over no-fly aones, smart sanctions, and WMD, not as part of the "war on terror". I view the Iraq situation as a discreet problem that complicates American foreign policy.   My certainty that the US military forces could dispose of Iraqi resistance and Hussein's regime buttressed my hope that the Bush administration could prosecute the political and diplomatic aspects of the situation just as ably. As a matter of fact, I wish the US military had invaded with overwhelming force. Secretary of State Rumsfeld's interference with the battle plan and his de-baathification policy stand out for opprobrium. I trusted Powell's argument about WMD, because I generally trust people until facts prove otherwise.  As Woodward discusses in State of Denial, though the truth was more complicated on the WMD issue. Indeed, Hussein's regime had the ability and will to produce WMD. The Gulf War and the sanctions regime had managed to sap its ability to pursue its various programs financially or effectively. But, like the Soviet Union, the regime produced WMD to the point, where the weapon was inoperable without a final order to conclude the process. The engineers would be able to produce effective weapons in six months to a year, but in the meantime could honestly tell inspectors that they did not have operable weapons.  If this were more widely known, it might have affected my opinion of the calculation between a sanctions regime and regime change, but not necessarily. I also believed that Bush administration unilateralism could shake the UN into reform. I also had no illusions about French and Russian opposition, because of Hussein's promise of oil contracts and other inducements. Again, I saw an opportunity, with Hussein out of power, for the UN to pursue a meaningful dialogue about non-proliferation and global energy competition. I realized I was betting on the devil, but that the Bush administration would not botch its mission, if only for its own image. Obviously, I did not realize how incompetent administration officials were, or how its fractiousness would undermine its own policies, except, of course, for the self-protecting mechanism that seems to monopolize the better part of its operations. I don't regret my support for the war, but I do regret trusting the Bush administration. I recall a quote, that a Gore administration would have invaded Iraq for these same reasons, but perhaps it would done a better job.

Reading Michael Hurt and Richardson, as respective representatives of the extreme thirds on the political landscape, from my vantage of the skeptical one-third in the center, both are partisan. They both view the Iraq War through the lenses of their either unalloyed support or opposition. But the lack of a complete success and the continuing episodes of administrative incompetence will allow partisans to pick and choose selective bits of the history to support their respective views that the other side created the problem. It was always about what was doable and for what reasons, not principle.