elementropy: Frum & Perle: Nine

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Frum & Perle: Nine

On page 25, we get the excuse Frank Gaffney is still trying to peddle to Glenn Greenwald and Alan Colmes; it's just as shitty and disingenuous when F&P did it in 2003:

The failure to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction has led some Bush (and Blair) administration critics to charge that the president and prime minister deliberately "hyped" or "sexed up" or otherwise exaggerated the danger posed by Saddam Hussein in order to justify a war to remove his regime.

True. See Downing Street Memo.

Others have demanded investigations into the intelligence basis for the two leaders' conclusion that it would have been risky and imprudent to leave Saddam in place.

The critics' emphasis on stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons as the central issue seems to us seriously misplaced. As David Kay has reported, there is overwhelming evidence that Saddam had extensive chemical and biological weapons programs[...]

Ahh, the semantic game. I remember that Daily Show: "Weapons of Destruction Program-related activities", which could mean anything.

And it wasn't that there were no stockpiles; it's that there were no WMD at all. Morons. Liars.

Saddam Hussein's ambitions were dangerous enough before 9/11; afterward, they had to be regarded as a clear and presen danger to the United States. The war on terror was certain to create all kinds of new opportunities for Saddam to exploit.

WTF? Are they saying that the War on Terra inspires terrorism?! If so, damned if we do and damned if we don't (but it's more fun if we do, because at least we're killin' us some Muslims then):

Even if Saddam Hussein refrained from waging or threatening war on us and our allies, his looming triumph over the inspectors and the sanctions would have emboldened and inspired terrorists around the world.

So get ready for it, the F&P corollary to the Ledeen Doctrine:

[W]e had to strike back and hard after 9/11, to prove that terrorism was not winning. Had we fought only in Afghanistan and then stopped, we would have conveyed the message that we were willing to accept the easy missions in the war on terror, but not the hard ones.

Instead, with F&P's help, we conveyed the message that we would accept the stupid and pointless and self-destructive missions. Great work, fuckheads!