I would not call Safire's view balanced. He's pretty right wing.
The facts are that Bushy and co. lied about the threat of WMDs
in Iraq. Then, he proceeded to invade Iraq where 1000s have
died. The containment of Saddam was working, obviously, since
there were no WMDs found. Sure, he was a bad guy. I'm glad
he's gone. That's not the point. The point is that the PRESIDENT
OF THE UNITED STATES LIED to the American people and
to the rest of the world. Our national security interests have been
compromized. The international and fairly univeral good will has
been undermined and is at it's lowest historical level. Our national
debt is beyond belief, and it will take generations to deal with it.

"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 6 Feb 2004 10:21:13 -0800, "Jonathan Ganz"
said:

There was no imminent threat, and while there might have been
a reason to invade, it wasn't because of an imminent threat of
WMDs.

Let me recommend Safire's column in today's NYT Magazine. He notes that
the
phrase "imminent threat" had, historically, great significance in
international law, since those were the magic words that triggered a
country's right to carry out a preemptive strike. The Pres. carefully
tiptoed around using that phrase, since using it would have been the
equivalent of saying "we're going to attack right now."

In fact, Bush's speeches leading up to the war enunciated a new legal
doctrine. In essence he said that in an age when aggression is carried out
by large-scale terrorist attacks rather than by frontal military assaults,
a
country cannot wait until an attack is "imminent," because the usual signs
that that is the case are absent. The Dems either accepted that doctrine
in
approving the war, or lacked the perception to realize Bush's position
represented a change in the rules. They now want to pretend they didn't do
either, by creating the fairy tale that even though Bush explicitly said
Iraq didn't represent an "imminent" threat, they were led to believe the
threat of an attack was "imminent" and so the historic rule was
misapplied.
Whether voters will accept this fairy tale or realize that it should start
with "once upon a time" we will see in the election.


Dave
S/V Good Fortune
CS27