Flashback

In the course of doing my first systematic content analysis, I was reminded of all of the reasons why the W. administration decided that launching a preemptive strike against a sovereign country was a good idea. Here's a review:

First Point: Saddam had WMD and was ready to use them.
Snarky reaction: We found hundreds of stockpiles of WMD with enough killing power to annihilate the planet several times over.
Reality: Lying about having WMD was Saddam’s only real deterrent against hostile invasion (read: U.S. or Iran).
Here's the latest: British government releases "sexed up" dossier draft,
Personally, I liked this sentence: Ex-U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said last year he believed Blair had replaced "question marks with exclamation marks" in intelligence dossiers to justify the decision to invade Iraq.

Second point: Saddam had significant ties to Al-Qaeda.
Snarky reaction: All of those love letters exchanged between Saddam and Osama proves the link.
Reality: The 9/11 Commission (scroll to section 10.3) concluded that there were no links at all between the two other than a similar interest in hurting the United States. Osama and Saddam had about as much in common as Kruschev and Ho Chi Minh
The Latest: American connection to the problems in Waziristan
Read the third point that the writer makes

Third Point: Saddam Hussein mistreated his own people.
Snarky reaction: Once we get the Iraqi government up and running we will have 100 percent democratization and no human rights abuses.
Reality: North Korea, Iran, Palestine, Darfur, China, Burma, Belarus, Saudi Arabia…
The summer Olympics will be held in China this year, despite that country's horrible human rights record. The U.S. boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. Both the Soviet Union and China (had) have repressive regimes, but China trades with the U.S. I guess making a buck trumps human rights abuses.

Chris