I wish I was as smart and as good a writer as Joe Conason

Red-Hot Rhetoric Getting Dangerous Now, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein is a murderous tyrant who aspires to be dangerous, both to his neighbors and the United States. He must be curbed, and if that is impossible, he must be overthrown. But the justifications for immediate, unilateral action to bring him down are no more convincing today than the first few times they were repeated by the President.

It is still difficult to understand why Saddam’s brutalities against the Kurds and the Iranians, which occurred well over a decade ago and didn’t disturb the Reagan or Bush administrations then, should motivate an invasion of Iraq now. It is puzzling that Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, which the United States and its allies repulsed after the Bush administration did so little to discourage that aggression, should now justify pre-emptive war. It is disturbing that four years after the U.N. inspectors left Iraq, political preparations for war have so suddenly become the administration’s overriding imperative in the weeks leading up to a national election.