The Washington Times (Moonie Times) ran a column by long-time conservative foreign policy writer Arnaut de Borchgrave that paints a pretty gloomy picture (from the Republican viewpoint) of Bush's credibility on foreign policy: Iraq and the Gulf of Tonkin 02/10/04. The Gulf of Tonkin reference is mostly another useless and superficial historical analysis in the column. The column actually focuses on this idea:
There is still time to remind ourselves WMDs were not the principal reason for going to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq; they were the pretext. And that's why irrefutable evidence was not the standard. Axis of evil regime change was the lodestar.
When this writer first heard from prominent neoconservatives in April 2002 that war was no longer a question of "if" but "when," the casus belli had little to do with WMDs. The Bush administration, they explained, starkly and simply, had decided to redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East. The Bush Doctrine of pre-emption had become the vehicle for driving axis of evil practitioners out of power. ...
The liberation of Iraq, in the neocon scenario, would be followed by a democratic Iraq that would quickly recognize Israel. This, in turn, would "snowball" -- the analogy only works in the Cedar Mountains of Lebanon -- through the region, bringing democracy from Syria to Egypt and to the sheikhdoms, emirates and monarchies of the Gulf.
De Borchgrave thinks this "neoconservative" notion was simplistic, at best. But his closing paragraph is also striking: "Iraq's nonexistent WMDs were never a threat to anyone. But they have already struck a devastating blow to the credibility of the Bush White House. The Doctrine of pre-emption becomes inoperable without unimpeachable intelligence accepted by all as the coin of the realm."
In passing, he makes reference to Saudi Arabia's army of 150,000. That's something to keep in mind when we hear references to the Pentagon plan to have an Iraqi army of 40,000.
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