Snitchy Hitchy
Juan Cole also points us to Christopher Hitchens' web site where Hitch boils the justification for the war down to these 8 questions (my replies appear in italics):
- 1) Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein's regime was
inevitable or not?
Inevitable? Not sure. Unnecessary? Probably.
2) Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would
have been better?
Better than what? What happened to a true society placing those charged with crimes on trial rather than proudly displaying their remains on video? A 14-year-old boy was killed with them.
3) Do you know that Saddam's envoys were trying to buy a weapons
production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as
late as last March?
Were they? According to more "intelligence"? Is this anything like the "yellow cake"? Could someone on the pro-War side prove something for a change instead of just performing mass speculation?
4) Why do you think Saddam offered "succor" (Mr. Clarke's word) to the
man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York?
Saddam would have offered to make Michael Jackson the Iraqi Ambassador to Boy Children if it would have pissed off the US. Plus there's the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" theory.
5) Would you have been in favor of lifting the "no fly zones" over
northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original "Gulf
War"?
Honestly not sure. I liked what the no-fly zones achieved for the Kurds in the north, for example. But whether it was our right to do this remains rather questionable.
6) Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all
the fighting for us?
Do all the fighting for us? Oh give me a break. They didn't fight for us. They thought they were in 1991, and learned that no, we were just letting them take the fall. Saddam slaughtered as many as possible. So let's not pretend we waged the war for them.
7) Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left,
as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?
Why was a confrontation required at all? You keep posturing that a confrontation was inevitable and necessary. I don't think it was either. If Saddam had remained in power another 20 years before he keeled over from heart disease, I doubt he would have lifted more than a pinky at us in derision. And isn't this the point where you should argue again that we did it to "free" the women and children? I mean, it's bullshit, but you folks like to toss it out.
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