Charles Krauthammer writes today:
Our objectives in Iraq were twofold and always simple: Depose Saddam Hussein and replace his murderous regime with a self-sustaining, democratic government.
What's missing from this assessment? No mention of weapons of mass destruction. Is this central argument made by the president and by the secretary of state at the U.N. now to be airbrushed from history? Is this a mere oversight on Charles' part? Or is he now revealing that he never believed the WMD rationale in the first place? If so, a little clarification might be in order. For a leading neocon to say he never believed the WMD casus belli before the war would be news, wouldn't it? And it would raise the question of whether others within the administration never believed it as well. Which raises the question of whether they were knowingly lying to us. Which seems to me to be a big deal.
[Update: here's president Bush's assessment of why we invaded Iraq from last summer:
"The main reason we went into Iraq: at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction."]