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> it was unclear to what extent Hussein had made any progress on building -- or buying -- nuclear weapons;

It was very clear that he hadn't, the US government (just like the chemical weapons) chose to ignore their own intelligence because it didn't suit their purpose.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_r...

> On March 1, 2002, INR published an intelligence assessment, Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely.

The Senate did an entire hearing on pre-war intelligence, you really should read it:

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=29877...

If you prefer something that you can sit and watch, see BBC Panorama's "The Spies who Fooled the World" - it is both interesting and frightening, especially the part where the single person who was the US source used in Powell's UN brief tells the interviewer he made everything up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3K9twuuU7g

> Saddam Hussein had irrefutably demonstrated that he was willing to use weapons of mass destruction in pursuit of his ambitions: he had used chemical weapons both on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians

With -- lest it be forgotten -- the full support and backing of the US government while he was actually doing it. Heck, when it first became public knowledge and world outrage started, the US rushed Donald Rumsfeld out to (1) demonstrate to the rest of the world that they should shut up and that the US stood side-by-side with Iraq, and (2) reassure Iraq that US support for their actions would continue.

Without wading into the morass of litigating the Iraq war, which would be stupid, because we are converging on bipartisan consensus that it was a debacle: two wrongs don't make a right, and "the US government" over the course of two decades isn't a single coherent unified force.

> "the US government" over the course of two decades isn't a single coherent unified force.

That's significantly less true of the executive branch foreign-policy decision makers at the time of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War and those at the time of the 2003 US-Iraq than it is either of the government as a whole at those two times or of the executive branch foreign policy apparatus over the whole intervening period.

The bush admin asserted that it could detain anyone without a trial and torture them. You know, they were trying to do good. We should just let that slide.

Let's see, is that better or worse than a drone strike?

I guess President Obama is trying to keep you alive so it's okay if he takes out a few miscreant citizens with drone strikes, right?

(And this is why these discussions belong somewhere else, not on Hacker News)

While I'm not a particular fan of this digression, in the defense of the guy you replied to he never said Obama was any better. You are the one making his argument partisan.

Oh, another round of what-aboutism. No, Obama is bad and Rice is bad and Bush is bad and anyone serving on the board of a tech startup is a reason to stop using it.

Will you stop using Google? Eric Schmidt has served as a tech adviser to Barack Obama.

Yes, I am limiting my use of Google consumer and business services for ethical reasons. Anything else?

> Let's see, is that better or worse than a drone strike?

That would only be a relevant question if the Bush Admin didn't use those, too.

> (C) in late 2002 and early 2003, memories of 9/11 were still raw;

So invading a completely unrelated country and killing and tourtoring its inhabitants is OK?

You have a very peculiar idea of "anti-war as the next guy".

Hindsight is always good, but this neglects that there was a strong point of view before the invasion of Iraq that it was a mistake. It simply wasn't a popular one in the US. But if you look internationally, there were a lot of people who stuck their necks out and said "don't do this, the evidence isn't very good." There were people in the US who did the same thing (notably Feingold).

The tragedy of US politics is that we don't seem to hold people who made the worst foreign policy call in several decades accountable. Unreconsidered support for the Iraq war should just categorically disqualify one for a position either within national politics or as a commentator on them. Yet it doesn't. These people are either cynical liars, easy-to-dupe rubes, cynical spinsters that can't be trusted to say what they think, or vacillating receptacles. Perhaps several categories apply to some. The point is, any of these characteristics should be disqualifying for national leadership.

There are some severe problems with your point. Specifically:

(A) We know what information was available at the time and they clearly did not make the best decision they could. There was a consistent focus on information that supported the desired outcome and away from information that didn't.

(B) Good intentions and $5 will buy you a coffee at Starbucks. Hitler genuinely wanted to do a good job.

(C) Irrelevant. If our national leaders cannot think rationally years after a tragedy then they are unfit to be leaders and should resign. It's especially irrelevant given that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

(D) No disagreement there.

(E) Nonsense. Nuclear weapons are hard to build. It was blindingly obvious to anyone who was paying the least bit attention that Iraq had made no real progress on obtaining nuclear weapons. There was an outside possibility that, if left unchecked, Iraq might be able to build nuclear weapons a decade or two down the line, but even that was unlikely. It certainly wasn't an urgent problem that required a massive rush to invade the country.

(F) The downside of a false positive on that issue was also considerable. You can't just look at the negatives of one side and say "better safe than sorry" when the negatives on the other side are equally large. The invasion killed a huge number of people and went a good way toward bankrupting this country. Compare that against... what? Even if Iraq had managed to obtain nuclear weapons, they had no way to deliver them anywhere.

(G) It was obvious to a lot of people before the invasion that it was a crock of shit and that it would cost a huge amount of money and lives for no good reason. Those people were all correct. The implication that this is pure hindsight is completely wrong.

> Nuclear weapons are hard to build

True, but I said "building -- or buying" nuclear weapons. See generally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#North_Korea.2...

> Even if Iraq had managed to obtain nuclear weapons, they had no way to deliver them anywhere.

The possibility of a nuclear weapon concealed in a container aboard a cargo ship was a non-trivial concern back then. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuke.

Remember that Saddam Hussein was not exactly a model of transparency.

It was clear that none had been purchased or were being purchased soon, either. Again, there's no rush. If and when it happens, then invade.

Even the most strident proponents of invasion were talking about buying yellowcake, not ready-to-go nuclear warheads. That wasn't put forward as a possibility by anybody.

There is now ample evidence showing that WMD claims were simply a casus belli for a war that had been desired for some time for other reasons.

> (and let's not forget his brutal conquest of Kuwait)

Oh! Fun with loaded words.

Between 300 and 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians were killed during the invasion and occupation.

I'm not one fo defend Mr Hussein's record, but that's pretty gentle as invasions go. The Russian bombardments of Grozny killed around 30,000 civilians; in one barrage on one day in October 1999 alone 120 were killed. Now that is brutal.

Sorry, but tempered reasoning like this is not acceptable in the maximalist society we have today. You must be absolutely certain about every issue and realize that those who disagree are evil, intentionally so, full-stop.

You have to tag this with /sarcasm. Some may downvote you thinking you are serious.

> You must be absolutely certain about every issue

When was the last time you were absolutely certain about something? Are you always absolutely certain in your day to day life, let alone in the shoes of someone like Rice?

WHOOSH

Right over his head and out of the park.

H) Or, you start something like the PNAC and bide your time..

(C) Saddam Hussein had irrefutably demonstrated that he was willing to use weapons of mass destruction in pursuit of his ambitions: he had used chemical weapons both on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians (and let's not forget his brutal conquest of Kuwait);

And who let him have those weapons and told him to go ahead and use them against the Iranians? He looks lovely in that photo embracing Donald Rumsfeld... So by this standard, many members of the US government had also shown willingness to use weapons of mass destruction. If this disqualified Hussein as a legitimate world leader, then why was Rumsfeld allowed in government?

What does this have to do with D.C.'s point?

You can't, in good faith, argue that Iraq was about WMD proliferation.

First, we didn't go to war with Pakistan or India to prevent them from getting nukes, despite the fact that the historical tension between those countries means that actual use of WMDs is terrifyingly likely.

Second, if people who have a history of using such weapons are inherently ill-suited to having them (a possible counter-argument for my first point, since Pakistan and India have never used them before), then why on earth did anyone let Bush's national security team (including Rumsfeld) so near the red button when they actively participated in Hussein's use of those weapons.

When you make an argument based on a point, and that point turns out to be invalid, the argument is weaker. That is what my point has to do with the original argument.

On one hand Rumsfeld et. al. implied / declared WMD were OK for Hussein to use on the Kurds, but later on removed him for allegedly hiding WMD.

Since DC made the argument that Hussein should have been removed because of his WMD use, you could make the same argument about the folks in the US govt who sponsored Hussein's original use of WMD against the Kurds.

> Since DC made the argument that Hussein should have been removed because of his WMD use ....

I'm not making that argument. I cite his WMD use as a factor that went into the thinking of the political leaders back then.

  > ...went into the thinking of the political leaders back then.

But if the things you cite don't make logical sense, then those things must not have been actual considerations, or those considerations were made in bad faith.

> But if the things you cite don't make logical sense, then those things must not have been actual considerations, or those considerations were made in bad faith.

First, what some people regard as logical in 2014 didn't necessarily appear to be logical to the relevant decisionmakers in early 2003. Again, hindsight is 20-20.

Second, watch out for the fallacy that there's only one acceptable ranking of values, and that anyone with a different ranking must be either stupid or evil.

I take no position here on the merits of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only that the level of self-righteous certitude among the people calling for C. Rice's head is faintly nauseating --- if unsurprising; I'm old enough to remember the similar certitude of some of the people who rioted against the Vietnam war.

(My dad used to describe people like that in (quasi) anapaestic tetrameter: "Often mistaken but never in doubt.")