Asymmetrical Information

Megan, you need to fix Will's link.

We can refute Chait's theory by simply asking, on which side are the empiricists in the Larry Summers' and The Lady Scientists brouhaha?

If liberals are empiricists, then why haven't they figured out that nominating cold-weather blue-state liberals for the Presidency causes them to lose badly? Isn't four examples enough to make the little light bulb go on over their heads?

That Chait piece was hysterical. I initially thought it was parody.

Rebuttal here. (not an endorsement, merely a link-following aid.)

Chait brought up Kinsley's beliefs about SS in his article, so I don't follow Darcy's claim that Wilkinson bringing up Kinsley's beliefs is a 'red herring'. I just couldn't bring myself to enter "giardia" in the comment password box to say so. Considering the origins of that disease, one wants to remove one's fingers from the keyboard.

He does say re. Wilkinson "His claims of self-refutation are themselves self-refuting." Help! We've fallen into a recursive loop!

Oh, and isn't this the same Jonathan Chait, writing 'the case for Bush hatred'?

He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school--the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks--shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks--blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing-- a way to establish one's social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.

There seem to be quite a few of us Bush haters. I have friends who have a viscerally hostile reaction to the sound of his voice or describe his existence as a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche.

It might be a fun idea to follow up Chait’s “I Hate Bush” column with a thread entitled “I hate Jonathan Chait because . . .”

We could all complete the sentence by speculating at to what sort of cretin we think Jonathan Chait is in real life and in true TNR fashion it wouldn’t matter whether we’d actually met the man or were just using it as an excuse to project traits we don’t like about people from our past onto an almost complete stranger.

Beavers, Mindles, think beavers. At least that what accounts for giardia in the Adirondacks.

A couple points:

1. I wanted to caution commenters from attributing “what Dems are thinking” status to things written in TNR. That's not a shot at Chait or his piece; I haven't read the piece (and won't – it's behind the wall), but I've generally liked his stuff. I'm just saying that TNR once had a certain deserved status, and it's probably not accurate to think it still has that status.

2. To the extent Wilkinson's claiming that Chait might have written his piece more clearly – maybe. To the extent that he's claiming either (a) there's nothing there in Chait's piece, or (b) there might be something there, but he has no idea what it is – color me suspicious. I'm interpolating from what Wilkinson quotes, but it looks like what underlies Chait's complaint is a concern that Dems have explicitly worried about for most of this Administration: where is the willingness to doubt and revise?

I certainly couldn't pretend to have the depth of philosophical knowledge that presumably Wilkinson has. But I'd imagine that empiricism requires a willingness to admit that your theory explaining the facts could be wrong; otherwise you'd just explain away all non-conforming data as variously irrelevant. And, at least to me, “reflective equilibrium” as a description of how we do or should make political judgments seems to enshrine a certain doubt about how much weight we put on theory. (I'm deeply open to correction on this paragraph by Wilkinson, or others with actual philosophical knowledge).

Many Dem actions seem to acknowledge this doubt. For example, to the extent that Dems were once anti-free-market and pro-deficit-spending (tho' remember Krugman's a Dem, and so's Bob Kerrey), we had an epipheny during the Clinton Administration. We looked around, saw a booming economy, saw a lot of social statistics going in the right direction, and said, “Well, economic growth by itself takes care of a hell of a lot.” Similarly, you see pro-war Dems, like Waring and Yglesias, walk back their endorsement of the invasion. These sorts of admissions of wrongness are culturally necessary for Dems to take themselves seriously. One of the problems that many Dems had with Kerry is that he wouldn't seem to do it and twisted himself one way and the other to avoid it (this also explains why his (admittedly limited) admission of mistake during the debates was greeted with such a cheer by our side).

But Republicans – I mean, WTF? Where are the admissions of mistake? For example, rather than wonder whether Iraq was wrong, IIRC, you essentially endorsed the idea that the Administration must have had a “secret reason” for invading Iraq, and that made everything OK. Where's the limiting principle there? Why can't he have a “secret reason” for getting rid of Social Security, or the Medicare Drug Bill? Why are we even bothering with debate, if all we need to know that a policy is appropriate is to know that George Bush stands behind it?

I guess I wonder if Chait's piece wasn't really about Dem willingness to revise our theories when given new facts; it seems like there might have been a more interesting reply.

There was some of that, Tim, and it's self-congratulatory nonsense. Of course pro-war Democrats have been quicker to walk-back their support of the war than pro-war Republicans, just as Republicans who, say, supported Clinton's health care plan would be more quick to abandon him when it blew up; there's a lower political price. I'm sorry you haven't been listening, but I've expressed lots of doubts about Iraq, including in my endorsement of Bush; the fact that I was underwhelmed with Kerry didn't mean that I thought the Bush administration was doing a stellar job--you might recall that I called for Don Rumsfeld to resign (and still think he should have). The fact that I haven't joined you in your belief that the Bush administration is some sort of uniquely evil monster, or singularly stupid, or any of the rest of the standard Democratic talking points, does not mean that I haven't revised my opinions about Iraq in the face of reality. I do assume that there were "secret reasons" for Iraq, just as there are "secret reasons" for most foreign policy decisions; it's not very practical to try to conduct foriegn policy without secrets. That doesn't make the Bush administration right.

(although I note, just as a side event, that there had damn well better not be one little bit of selective amnesia about who supported what if the Iraq war does produce one or more democracies in the Middle East, given how much crap I've taken from Democrats. I will not stand for anyone claiming, as people regularly do about communism, to have been on the right side of history. I was for the war; I now recognise that I made some colossal errors in judgement; nonetheless, I am reserving my ultimate verdict for a few years. Those who have not waited to deliver theirs can count upon me to call bullshit should they attempt to subsequently revise it.)

I don't mean to say, mind you, that there aren't Republicans who haven't learned from empirical experience; my semi-annual battles with the proponents of the Laffer Curve show there certainly are. But are there more of them? More than Democrats who believe that expanding government health care provision is cost-effective, against the evidence of every government health care expansion America has ever seen? More than Democrats who argue, against all evidence, that free trade is bad for the American economy? More than Democrats who believe that bond interest rates have a big effect on the decision to save and invest, but taxation on interest income has practically none? Every so often I get a Democratic commenter here with a degree in economics who claims that he is a liberal because he is an economist. This is breathtakingly stupid, from someone who is supposed to be trained in data gathering; it's hard to imagine how one manufactures a causal relationship between an economics degree and a political persuasion, when those who possess them seem to break about evenly between conservatives and liberals.

Rather, we all like to settle normative debates with positive claims. For example, if I am normatively against redistributionary taxation because I place a high value on property rights, it's much nicer to be able to point out that progressive tax regimes don't do a good job at redistribution, or in some other way don't work, than it is to get into a thorny argument about economic justice; positive claims are relatively easy to settle, and pretty much everyone can agree, for example, that we shouldn't raise taxes on the rich by 5% if that will reduce GDP by 50%.

But liberals have no monopoly on empirical judgement. Take one issue I've worked on, welfare reform. Liberals have come around to the obvious fact that welfare caused a lot of perverse incentives that helped maintain the underclass. Conservative policymakers, however, have also come around on the idea that former welfare-mothers can be self-supporting in the medium term; thus, they recognise the need for auxiliary supports like Chips, the EITC, and so on. Neither side has the monopoly on empirical response.

The belief that they do seems to me to be decidedly un-empirical.

MCHD wrote:

Many Dem actions seem to acknowledge this doubt. For example, to the extent that Dems were once anti-free-market and pro-deficit-spending (tho' remember Krugman's a Dem, and so's Bob Kerrey), we had an epipheny during the Clinton Administration.

In this case the “epiphany” was the 1994 elections which gave control of the House and Senate over to Republicans.

But Republicans – I mean, WTF? Where are the admissions of mistake? For example, rather than wonder whether Iraq was wrong, IIRC, you essentially endorsed the idea that the Administration must have had a “secret reason” for invading Iraq, and that made everything OK.

Except of course those of us who supported liberating Iraq including the administration have always been up front with the multiple reasons (note the plural) for doing so from the beginning.

In this case the “epiphany” was the 1994 elections which gave control of the House and Senate over to Republicans

Umm. No. Clinton had already pushed through a deficit reduction package in 93 and the deficit was already beginning to decline by the time Newt and Co. took over congress.

But Republicans – I mean, WTF? Where are the admissions of mistake? For example, rather than wonder whether Iraq was wrong, IIRC, you essentially endorsed the idea that the Administration must have had a “secret reason” for invading Iraq, and that made everything OK.

Speaking as a conservative (not a Republican per se), WOW -- there's a brush you could hit the broad side of a barn with, probably in one swipe. Exactly what general "admissions of mistake" were you hoping for? If it's a recanting of all support for the war follwed by a parrot chourus of Democratic talking points, keep waiting -- but fetch yourself an adequate supply of drinking water first. If it's something else, then state your case, but be prepared to have Certain Irrevocable Principles questioned closely on their merits. (For example, some of us really did look forward to an Iraq free of Saddam and with open elections, so there's not much to admit there. Give it a couple years, and maybe there will be, but let us all hope otherwise.)

Where's the limiting principle there?

Same one you have. When this side of the political aisle loses the presidency and Congress, expect it to likewise introspective self-criticism. That is, unless you were aolso looking for some sort of higher morality in politicians. Let me know how that works out. Update me on the lead-to-gold project at the same time.

Why can't he have a “secret reason” for getting rid of Social Security, or the Medicare Drug Bill? Why are we even bothering with debate, if all we need to know that a policy is appropriate is to know that George Bush stands behind it?

In short, you are blitzing past much of the debate that has or is presently taking place. Since you bring up SS and Medicare Drug, let us review:

SS: I remember liberal voices criticizing Bush early in his first term because SS was heading for a future demographic cliff and he wasn't doing anything to address it, and now that he IS thinking about it, some of those same voices are arguing like the dickens for the status quo, while the rest protest that Bush's designs don't meet the Democrat's goals for the program. Oh, really? Well, shoot, we can't have that, quick, light up a bonfire in the middle of the House floor and sing a few rounds of Coumb By Yah instead. The C-Span audience will love it.

Medicare Drug: The seniors vote as a block on these issues and the Democrats were propopsing an even more exorbitant package. Bush passed a dumb plan, and conservative-leaning voices have said so; but the only politically-feasible alternative, measured in financial terms, was an even dumber plan.

Anyway, uh...well...hmm. Somewhere in there, your point evaporated. Bring me back up to date: What am I supposed to be outraged about?

I think most people understand that articles like this by Chait are really just high-brow ways to insult.

This one, praising 'incoherence' and 'lack of certainty' as by-products of empiricists' philosophy puts them very close to skeptics -- not worried about going against reason and never sure of what might be.

This, plus the airy certainty in the tone of the article, reminded me of Pascal's comment about skeptics: he cannot, in the end, take any of their arguments seriously because they fail to apply their skepticism to skepticism itself as a mode of thought that leads to truth. At that most fundamental of levels they aren't skeptics at all, being totally certain as they are that skepticism is the infallible guide to the common good.

Chait has that kind of bedrock certainty that casting aside ideological certainty is a true sign you're one of the good guys. This is dinner-party stuff that is enjoyed by "the family" but is usually not drug out into public. This piece seems to confirm the wisdom of that habit.

Jane:

On Iraq -

Secret reasons for Public Wars: First, I have to admit that I don't quite understand the logic behind this. I'd think that in large, showy things like invasions against countries that aren't a threat, part of the point is surely to set up a clear incentive structure for “how not to get invaded.” To the extent that the actual reason for the war (or even some of the actual reasons) are secret – well, it doesn't seem like the smartest way to communicate the incentive structure. And (I'd argue) the fact that no majority outside of the US really feels that they have a grasp on why we actually did go in is no small part of the reason that we're suffering a certain PR problem in most of the rest of the world.

Second, what does it mean to say that Bush could still be wrong? How could we possibly guess? His reasons are secret (or at least a significant part of his reasons), so we have no way of measuring the justification. Hell, as far as either of us know, things are going vastly better than could be expected. More problematically, what does this mean you are up for? A foreign policy where everyone just stands and salutes? And where, as in the ludicrous WOT, the war is endless and has domestic aspects, do we, as a people, just bend over every time the Administration declares things they do here are unquestionable b/c they relate to said war? I mean, we can't really ask them to justify that claim – the reasons in the balance are secret. If you really mean this, then it looks to me like you're up for the Imperial Executive, which is kind of scary.

If Iraq Becomes Eden: I'm fine with the no revising thing; you'll get your fill from the I-Was-For-The-War-But-Against-The-War, And-Right-All-Along (e.g., Freidman), but feel free to verbally wack them for me. Of course, I assume that if Iraq deteriorates along any of the number of lines now possible, we'll get (and only get) the following short declarative sentence from you: “I was for the war, and I was wrong.”

More generally -

My complaint is really against Bush supporters, rather than Republicans or conservatives. (I say this b/c I think that both Asdenik and Drezner's explanations for voting Kerry fall roughly into the category of complaint I mentioned above). And, to a large degree, it probably cultural; there are no idealist answers out there that can be definitively demonstrated. You either feel Bush's justifications for policies are sloppy, or you think they're sufficiently dense as to be credible and non-worrying. That you think the latter (if you think the latter) is what's interesting (and worrying) about you and Mindles. Given that what I'm talking about is nearly aesthetic, and that my background is similar to yours and Mindles's, the fact that such basic intuitions are so separated means that those unverbalized senses of right and wrong that order what we say and argue are really, really fractured. (Which is, I think, an apology for revisiting this issue).

Well first the Democrats should admit that the Clinton administration and their supporters in Congress screwed up by adopting the wrong containment posture with regards to Iraq, and by doing so put the nation at greater risk for terror strikes without doing enough to enhance security.

Well first the Democrats should admit that the Clinton administration and their supporters in Congress screwed up by adopting the wrong containment posture with regards to Iraq, and by doing so put the nation at greater risk for terror strikes without doing enough to enhance security.

Why should anyone admit to that which is not true? The Clinton administration's, and Bush 41's stance toward Iraq from the end of the Gulf War worked perfectly. It destroyed Husseins nuclear capability and his WMD arsenal and systematically decimated his convention armed forces. Hussein hadn't made an aggressive move against a neighboring country since the end of the Gulf War. Enforcement of the no-fly zones allowed Kurdish rebels to gain a measure of autonomy, and Hussein couldn't do anything about it. As for terrorism by Hussein, there's no evidence that Hussein was involved in any of the terror strikes that hurt our people either home or abroad.

Anyway, uh...well...hmm. Somewhere in there, your point evaporated. Bring me back up to date: What am I supposed to be outraged about.

Gee, I dunno. Maybe 1500 and counting dead U.S. troops. Thousands more wounded. Intelligence and military resources diverted from the hunt for Bin Ladin and Company. Money given to the the new Iraqi goverment that has simply vanished. Arsenals being plundered. The main reason for the war turning out to be false.

It's funny, but I thought of the exact same earlier Chait article as Mindles did-- but the passage I had in mind was this gem of unintentional self-revelation, which seems very apposite here: "Being a liberal, you probably subject yourself to frequent periods of self-doubt. But then you conclude that you're actually not missing anything at all."

Mojo,

You and I will forever disagree.
(1) The Iraqi war did not divert any resources from the hunt for bin Laden.
(2) The "dead troops" did not die in vain--the dynamics of the Middle East are changing as a result of our efforts (cf the Lebanese who said, "Please, America, invade us too.) and both the U.S. and the world are safer as a result.
(3) "Money vanished." It didn't vanish, we gave it to the Iraqis. What you mean is that we don't have strict accounting/audit trails to know exactly what they did with the money. So?
(4) Arsenals were plundered because Bush took so much time to give the UN chance after chance to prove that they were still relevant. With so much lead time, Hussein and his followers had plenty of time to secrete whatever arms they wanted.
(5) WMD's may have been the main reason for you, but they were only one of many reasons for a lot of us. Once Bush declared the GWOT, invading Iraq became a foregone conclusion--the only question was how to get enough people on board with the idea. So, many reasons were proposed. Funny how the Bush haters seem to stick exclusively with WMD's.

Rex

1. It did divert resources from the Bin ladin report, at least according to several news sources. A nubmer of recon aircraft were shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq.

2. I am not saying that no good has come from the deaths of the troops, but they are still dead and they need not have died. This war, while perhaps beneficial, was not necessary. Justifying their deaths doesn't make the troops less dead. It's also debateable as to whether we are in fact safer, with our troops strength stretched thin and a large portion pinned down in Iraq fighting an enemy that was no military threat to us.

3. The money may well have vanished. It may have been stolen, misappropriated, embezzeled. Because no accounting was given, we will most likely never know. The "SO" is I really don't like us forking out billions of our tax dollars to a new, unelected regime with no accountablity. Especially when we need money here at home for thigns like Social Security.

4. I am referring to the arsenals plundered AFTER we overthrew Hussein. This has nothing to do with waiting for the U.N. It has to do with poor military planning on our part. This material is now in the hands of people trying to kill our troops.

5. WMDs were our GOVERNMENT'S main reason. That's what they harped on. Yes, the threw in some other things, but all the histrionics were about "mushroom clouds" "stockpiles", "Reconstituted nuclear weapons". Powell's presentation was almost exclusively about WMDs and the resolutions pertainign to them. Bush highlighted WMDs most of all in his SOTU address. The other items were of secondary or even tertiary importance. Without the threat of WMD, they could not have sold this war to the public. Saying the were other reasons is like saying you go to Hooters for the wings and the big screen t.v. and drink Bud light because of the wheat, rice and barley.

Rex: Funny how the Bush haters seem to stick exclusively with WMD's.

Funny how Rex ignores the Bush administration's own report that states that Iraq destroyed its biological and chemical weapons long before the invasion, not that it secreted them.

Funny how Bush lovers bend over for him no matter what facts are revealed.

I agree with the notion that anyone looking to prove that one side or the other is more or less "empirical" is probably bound to fail, if only because so much evidence has accumulated over the years showing each side's willingness to act on ideological faith rather than practical evidence.

What frustrates those of us in today's loyal opposition is movement conservativism's incredible capacity to combine empiricism and idealism.

Essentially, what they are is incredibly empirical about politics. That is, they are very astute at figuring out the exact combination of idealistic appeals that will net 51% of the vote.

Whether the policies stated to garner those votes actually work is another question entirely, and one that does not seem to be factored into the policy-making process. Remember John DiIulio's comment when he left the WH faith-based office: "everything is controlled by the political arm. There's no policy apparatus, only a political apparatus." (I paraphrase).

Time seems to have proven him out; again and again we see cases of conservative policies that are great at getting votes (faith-based services; prescription drug benefits; banning gay marriage), but don't do the job that they're intended to do. Or do it at tremendous expense. Or fade away when their rhetorical task is done.

So while I sympathize with Chait's apparent need to explain why the WH seems bent on embracing policies that don't work, I think they're best explained (as the election results prove) as policies that DO work - by winning votes.

I'm told, though, that the wings at Hooters are very good.

"Luckily for me, the sickeningly brilliant Will Wilkinson has waded into the fray."

Isn't it incredible how every third libertarian is "brilliant"? (And no, this blog is by no means the only place of libertarianism from which I would gather that idea.

Sounds like an intellectual circle jerk, or better yet, an unrecognized intellectual circular firing squad.

socraticgadfly.blogspot.com

MojoRising writes:

I am not saying that no good has come from the deaths of the troops, but they are still dead and they need not have died. This war, while perhaps beneficial, was not necessary. Justifying their deaths doesn't make the troops less dead. It's also debateable as to whether we are in fact safer, with our troops strength stretched thin and a large portion pinned down in Iraq fighting an enemy that was no military threat to us.

I have two thoughts on this paragraph.

1. What would have rendered the Iraq war "necessary"? It is very evidently necessary to what we call the Bush Doctrine; it was very evidently necessary in order to depose Saddam Hussein, a goal Clinton also espoused; it obviously brought a quick end to torture and rape rooms (oh, just get off your high horse, abu Ghraib-ites, you know exactly what I'm talking about - we are shamed by abu Ghraib but we are not anywhere near Saddam's league), "cleansing" of the Kurds, forced amputations, mass graves in the desert... So, what's the criterion for "necessity"?

2. "No military threat to us" - neither was al Qaeda a military threat to us. To review: even positing for the sake of argument (and only for the sake of argument) that WMDs were our main reason for invading Iraq, we had good reason to believe that they were there and no good reason to believe that they weren't (even Blix said he couldn't state definitively that they weren't there, just that he hadn't found them, and we all recall proscribed materiel that the Saddam regime couldn't - or wouldn't - account for). If you're the POTUS, faced with this decision, do you act on the intel you have, or do you err on the side of Saddam's much-vaunted restraint and benevolence? When American lives at home and abroad are at stake?

Then, having made the decision not to trust the devil to keep his promises, you invade, and the regime is toppled in super-quick time, leaving a power vacuum. Unfortunately you don't find stockpiles of WMDs, just scattered instances and (as we geologists might say) "trace fossils." Do you just look sheepish, apologize, prop the broken door back in its shattered frame, and back out? What would be the result?

We took an action; it had consequences, for which we are responsible. Soldiers American, allied, and Iraqi who have died in this conflict are indeed just as dead as the thousands who died on D-Day, and for as important a reason: because they had a vital mission to perform, and soldiers take our responsibility on their shoulders and sometimes die for it - that's what they do.

OK, 3. A two-front war is what our military structure is set up to prosecute. We're not stretched nearly as thin as some seem to believe. My gosh, the Air Force and Navy are only minimally involved in Iraq - you think we can't do some stuff with them? Especially given the apparently-common lefty belief that the only "good" war is an air war? And this is even IF I were to posit (again, only for the sake of argument) that we'd have trouble fielding a team on the ground. And, too, our ground commitment in Iraq is going to be decreasing over the next months as more Iraqi forces get up to speed, just to comfort those who don't believe Abizaid.

Jamie,in rebuttal

1. None of what you listed makes the Iraq war necessary. It may make it proper but their is a difference between a war being necessary (WWII,for example) and simply having some moral justification. Rape rooms etc. while horrible, didn't make the invasion of Iraq any more necessary than starvation in North Korea, persecution of the Falung Gong in China and dispossion of white farmers in Zimbabwe make invasions of those nations necessary.

2. This is an apples to oranges comparison. Al Qaeda was no "military threat" but they weren't a sovereign, well defined nation with standing army, either. Also, there was a little thing on 9/11 which made it at least somewhat more urgent to go after them than it did to go after Iraq, which had nothing to do with it. And about that intelligence, there was far from a unanimous opinion on WMD capabilty/possession by Iraq. Our own intelligence agencies gave the admin warning, which it chose to ignore.

3. Our military IS stretched thin. There's no disputing this. Senior military people have warned about this. When did I ever say we coudn't "do anything" with our air force and navy? OF course we can, but we need ground troops too. We probably couldn't stop a North Korean invasion of South Korea with just our airforce and navy, for example. You need troops on the ground too. As for the troop reductions, its possible, but I'll believe it when I see it and of course, if something were to happen anytime soon, it wouldn't be fast enough.

As for the WMD, there's really no serious dispute by anyone who isn't a Bush supporter that they were the primary reason for the war. Read Bush's remarks, Powell's speech. This war was not sold to the public on the basis of allowing Iraqis to vote or stopping rape rooms. Those were secondary reasons. And even if there were WMDs in IRaq, there's not a scintilla of evidence that Hussein would ever have used them against US. He didn't when we KNEW he had them in the Gulf War. He didn't during Operation Desert Fox. He didn't even hit Isreal with them, even though, he proved he could hit Israel with Scuds. So the histrionics about Bush needing to make a snap decision to protect American lives is nothing more than histrionic panty wetting.

If you're the POTUS, faced with this decision, do you act on the intel you have, or do you err on the side of Saddam's much-vaunted restraint and benevolence?

It's this type of language that shows me that some people aren't interested in a serious discussion of whether this war was justified or not. They clearly want to find some reason to back Bush at all costs, don't care about the facts and want to attack the decency of anyone who expresses an opposing position. I don't know of anyone who opposed/opposes this war on the grounds that Hussein was "benevolent" or showed any great restraint. Many of us opposed it because we believed, and have been vindicated by the facts, that Hussein was no threat to us, at least not one that required a ground invasion of Iraq with substantial loss of American life. Far from believing Hussein was benevolent, we thought that he had his military degraded by the Gulf War, the Clinton airstrikes and a decade plus of sanctions, and that he knew he was too weak to attack the United States, because he knew what our military could do to him.

Mojo,

I told you we would forever disagree on this. Attacking Iraq was absolutely essential to prosecute the GWOT. Quibble about whether or not we should be engaged in the GWOT, but that's a different issue. (I support it; the attacks on US troops and embassies have been going on far too long without any retaliation for my liking.)

Yeah, we're stretched thin, but we're not stretched "too" thin. Believe me, we still have enough troops to invade North Korea should they be foolish enough to attack South Korea.

We have more troops in Afganistan now than we did during our effort against the Taliban.

We lost fewer troops during the offensive part of the war in Iraq than would have been killed in traffic accidents if they had been stateside. Believe me, the average troop would rather have his/her death count for something rather than getting killed in an accident. When it's your time to go, it's your time to go.

A slight majority supported going into Iraq before WMD's were mentioned. However, for that large an undertaking, the American people had to be more supportive of the effort than a slight majority. That's when the administration started talking about WMDs. The democrats in Congress supported the war because the vast majority of their constituents supported it. As soon as they could, they backed away from their initial support.

"Military" threat? Since when was that an issue? Ever? The military is used against threats to the national security (not against so called military threats), and I believe that terrorism has become the greatest threat to our national security bar none.

Again, I told you we would forever disagree on this.

"Fellow journalist."

Forgive me, Eamon, for taking umbrage at the suggestion that I'm not "serious" because I use irony in saying "do you err on the side of Saddam's much-vaunted restraint and benevolence," yet Mojo gets away with "histrionic panty wetting." Not to mention "Our military IS stretched thin. There's no disputing this," which obviously means that if I do dispute it I'm a simpleton (and probably from a red state).

I'm not intending to impugne anyone's "decency," though, rereading my own post, I can see how you took it that way. Please accept my apology if you felt impugned. My point is that all arguments being made against war in Iraq now have the unquestioned benefit of hindsight. Some of these arguments were also being made before the invasion, at which time it was absolutely *not* clear whether Saddam Hussein would continue to sit in his palaces doing nothing to us (openly or directly). If I were the POTUS, I say again, and I knew that my predecessor had also considered removing this man from his dangerously powerful position a *top* priority, and I had intelligence pointing to his regime's support of terrorist organizations including al Qaeda (one can argue about the quality of the intelligence but it was out there), and he had consistently defied the (irony) much vaunted (/irony - hope that helps) UN over the course of a decade and more, and a useful chunk of the American military was already tied down defending a no-fly zone that was coming under almost daily attack by this same man, and I looked at a map and saw the strategic significance of Iraq.... (deep breath) I could see myself making the same decision. If you can't, that's a point for debate, but not a sign that I'm not "serious," nor that I'd fall on my sword for Bush, nor (though you didn't say this) that I'd subscribe to the end-justifies-the-means defense of Bush's actions.

"As for the WMD, there's really no serious dispute by anyone who isn't a Bush supporter that they were the primary reason for the war."

Primary perhaps, but by no means only.

http://hnn.us/articles/1282.html

These are not your words, but it continues to amaze me that people who lampooned Bush for being 'controlled by neocons (ie the dreaded PNAC) dreaming of exporting democracy by force' now claim that theme was only dragged out post invasion. One cannot have it both ways. The moron dreaming of exporting democracy before the war can't be the guy who just thought of it after the whole world turned up mistaken on WMD.

With Blair on board, Bush increasingly emphasized WMD as a way to enroll a broader coalition. Like Spitzer using the Martin Act, they grabbed the available tool.

I'll seriously dispute that WMDs is why we went to war in Iraq. We went to war in Iraq, because prior to 911 that was the only way the Bush would have ever been able to get anything done. Unfortunately, without 911, Bush wouldn't have amounted to a damn thing. And, still doesn't. Bush was history on 910. No wonder his daddy made the call that saved his son's presidency.

Eh? I'm not following.

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