Iraq War: Back when Iraq had nukes...

Matt Iglesias of the American Prospect's TAPPED blog has a useful reminder about the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program: Lies and the Arab dictators who don't really back them up 08/17/04.

On chem/bio stockpiles, yes, by 2002 and early 2003 most observers thought Saddam had them. That was what the inspectors were sent in to find and destroy. And, as you may recall, they didn't find any. This provoked two sorts of reactions -- many people thought maybe they weren't finding any because there weren't any there, and they should be given more time to check the situation out. Others reacted by viciously denouncing Hans Blix for his obvious ineptitude in failing to find the weapons, denounced the whole UN as a useless farce (it can't even find the weapons!), and said the whole inspections process was clearly worthless so we'd better invade and go find those weapons. And so we did. But they weren't there.

The whole point of focusing on Iraq policy in late 2002, however, had to do with Iraq's nuclear program, nuclear weapons being far more dangerous than chemical weapons or the sorts of biological weapons Saddam was thought to possess. Here there was never consensus that the administration's factual claims were correct. Indeed, quite the reverse, though the U.S. media didn't give much prominence at the time to debunkings and disputes over all sorts of administration contentions. Just because the administration said some things that were widely believed at the time doesn't mean they didn't actually say many things that were widely doubted and that they either knew -- or should have known -- were untrue.

Remember all the sneers about the UN inspectors driving around in the desert in a country the size of California and blah, blah?  Oh, yes, the good ole days.  When war in Iraq was still a hopeful fantasy and American was the hammer of Good versus Evil.  Ah, yes, things seemed so simple then ...

How did that song go?  "Can it be it was all so simple then/Or has time rewritten every line?"