A blog called Soundbitten zinged me for something I wrote last March. It’s a pretty silly potshot since he (she? I dunno) clearly doesn’t understand what I was talking about here in the Corner and also skips over the fact that in numerous pro-war columns, I never emphasized the WMD issue as my primary motive in order to make it sound like I’ve flip-flopped. Then Atrios picked it up – without attribution, by the way – and so this afternoon I’ve received a quite a few, almost invariably nasty, emails taunting me about it. On a side note I must say that of the dozens of blogs of the left and right which criticize me with great frequency, the readers of Eschaton/Atrios are without a doubt the most reliably ugly and cheap about it. I can take the criticism, but it really seems like these guys work hard at being unlikable, in contrast to plenty of liberals and leftists who zing me all the time. Anyway, here’s the offending passage I wrote last March 28:
So here’s the deal: George Bush — who has rightly been much more reluctant than Tony Blair to toss the U.N. a bone when it comes to the potentially lucrative prospect of rebuilding Iraq — should make it known that if Coalition forces find no Iraqi WMD while we’re in there, we will defer to the U.N. on how to run postwar Iraq. If the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein would “change the equation” for the French during the war, why shouldn’t the discovery of WMD stockpiles at the end of hostilities change the equation for the peace? If it becomes clear that the United States and Great Britain were right when we said France, Russia, and Germany were being willfully obtuse in not seeing Iraq’s noncompliance, why shouldn’t the Coalition nations be rewarded for having the courage of our convictions? If these reconstruction contracts must go to someone, and we can credibly argue that we made the greatest sacrifices while the French and Russians were supine appeasers, why shouldn’t those contracts go to us?
Now, to be honest, I think they should go to us regardless, because America’s motives were right — and our sacrifices are real — even if Saddam doesn’t have these weapons. For twelve years he issued bilious clouds of smoke in order to make the world think there’s a fire in Iraq. If it turns out it was all smoke and no fire, that doesn’t make us wrong for bringing the fire hose.
But, as a political proposition, without the discovery of WMD, postwar Iraq will be a political tar baby anyway — perhaps even if we’re greeted as liberators by most Iraqis. We might as well hand it over to the United Nations. I am still confident we will find plenty of such weapons — Saddam didn’t buy those chemical suits and atropine injectors because Glamour magazine says they’re all the rage….