OxBlog

# Posted 1:26 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

RETHINKING THE DECISION TO INVADE: I'd like to acknowledge the recent NYT editorial that cast a critical glance at the positions that the NYT had taken in the months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Ever since the Jayson Blair scandal and the departure of Howell Raines, the Times seems much more committed to initiating public discussion of its own shortcomings. On the other hand, politics are politics and even this recent mea culpa has its shortcomings. For example, the Times writes that

We [] fault ourselves for failing to deconstruct the W.M.D. issue with the kind of thoroughness we directed at the question of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, or even tax cuts in time of war. We did not listen carefully to the people who disagreed with us...We had a groupthink of our own.

Pardon my asking, but who thought that Saddam didn't have WMD? Scott Ritter? By pretending that there were reliable sources it didn't listen to, the NYT suggests that there were also reliable sources that the White House and CIA ignored because of their supposed groupthink.

Yet in spite of an overwhelming consensus on both sides of the Atlantic, George Bush had his doubts about the existence of Saddma's stockpiles until George Tenet described American intelligence on Iraqi WMD as a "slam-dunk". Moreover, Bush decided to subject Saddam to a test -- UN inspections. On that subject, the NYT writes that

If there were no weapons, we thought, Iraq would surely have cooperated fully with weapons inspectors to avoid the pain of years under an international embargo and, in the end, a war that it was certain to lose.

That was a reasonable theory, one almost universally accepted in Washington and widely credited by diplomats all around the world. But it was only a theory.

What the Times fails to point out is that disbelieving such a theory entailed having faith in Saddam's honesty and good intentions. As Stephen Sestanovich points out on today's op-ed page, Bush was right to act based on this theory:

When America demanded that Iraq follow the example of countries like Ukraine and South Africa, which sought international help in dismantling their weapons of mass destruction, it set the bar extremely high, but not unreasonably so. The right test had to reflect Saddam Hussein's long record of acquiring, using and concealing such weapons. Just as important, it had to yield a clear enough result to satisfy doubters on both sides, either breaking the momentum for war or showing that it was justified.
Some may object that this approach treated Saddam Hussein as guilty until proved innocent. They're right. But the Bush administration did not invent this logic. When Saddam Hussein forced out United Nations inspectors in 1998, President Clinton responded with days of bombings - not because he knew what weapons Iraq had, but because Iraq's actions kept us from finding out.

Sestanovich isn't grinding a partisan axe here. He was a high-ranking ambassador under Clinton in addition to being a well-regarded expert on Russian affairs.