Jac Wilder VerSteeg (via CJR Campaign Desk) takes Bush for task on Weapons of Mass Destruction-Related Program Activities":
If we hadn't invaded, President Bush says correctly, "Iraq's torture chambers would still be filled with victims" and "the killing fields of Iraq -- where hundreds of thousands of men, women and children vanished into the sands -- would still be known only to the killers."
If ending human-rights horrors justifies the Iraq invasion, however, how does the United States justify allowing other horrors to continue? Why were we so stand-offish in Liberia? Are we heading back to Haiti? The 10-year civil war toll in Burundi is 300,000, and it features ethnic atrocities encountered in Rwanda. Is President Bush poised to invade if the cease-fire falls apart?
Why Iraq and why not North Korea or Syria or Iran? If you don't want to oust Fidel Castro by military force, then I guess you're opposed to the liberation of Cuba. President Bush's commitment to liberation is so retroactive and selective it almost looks like a commitment to liberation-related rhetorical activities.
In other news, the BBC aren't taking the Hutton whitewash lying down. And Rumsfeld reckons the future is so uncertain that it's not worth planning for anything.
