OxBlog

# Posted 12:24 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA: "Saddam Hussein is obviously a brutal dictator who deserves toppling. No one who knows his history can doubt that he is secretly trying to develop weapons of mass destruction...The inspectors alone will never disarm Iraq." Is this the Washington Times? The National Review? The Weekly Standard? Josh Chafetz? All wrong. It's the New York Times.

Anti-war commentators are becomig desperate. They can no longer pretend that inspections might work or that Saddam does not have proscribed weapons. They are searching for any justification whatsoever to hold off an invasion. Consider, for instance, what the Times has come up with to counter its admission that Saddam is in material breach of Resolution 1441:

Mr. Bush has never...been clear about exactly why we are preparing to fight. Sometimes his aim appears to be disarming the Iraqis or punishing Baghdad for defying the United Nations; sometimes the goal is nothing short of deposing Mr. Hussein. The first lesson of the Vietnam era was that Americans should not be sent to die for aims the country only vaguely understands and accepts.

The critical flaw in this argument is that the American public would not hesitate for a second to support the invasion of Iraq if it shared the Times' belief that "No one who knows his history can doubt that he is secretly trying to develop weapons of mass destruction." As polls have shown, what Americans want is more evidence of Iraqi non-compliance, not a justification for enforcing 1441.

Ironically, the Times has backed itself into the same corner as French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, who said just a few days ago that "Already we know for a fact that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything possible to strengthen this process." As Jonah Goldberg points out, "if France knows [this] for 'a fact,' then France also knows for a fact that Iraq has such weapons programs. After all, you can't block or freeze what doesn't exist..."

In the final analysis, no self-respecting multilateralist can argue both that Iraq is in material breach of 1441 and that the United States should hold back from enforcing the UN's stated will.

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