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The administration’s rationale for launching a pre-emptive war against another nation boiled down to three reasons, all of which are proving to be dubious:
• Iraq and terrorism. As it is turning out, Saddam Hussein was no real threat to America. And, according to two of the highest-ranking leaders of al-Qaeda currently in U.S. custody, he had no major links to the terrorist organization, or to the September 11 attacks.
• He had weapons of mass destruction. According to published reports, when the C.I.A. evaluations of the potential Iraqi nuclear threat weren’t, well, threatening enough, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had Pentagon intelligence units re-interpret the evidence to make it more frightening. (Where’s Jayson Blair when you need him?) And in The Sunday Times of London, Phillip Knightley reported that the pre-war findings of the British intelligence unit M.I.6 were rewritten by the Blair government to make them “more exciting” and, therefore, a more useful tool in the prime minister’s argument for war.
• Saddam be bad. Yes, of course he was bad. But if the presence of oppressive regimes is an adequate rationale for going to war, we’re going to be busy for a long time. When do we invade Liberia? Congo? Zimbabwe? Ivory Coast? New York City?”
—Graydon Carter, “The Phony War,” August 2003
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