{"id":1210,"date":"2003-06-09T12:08:28","date_gmt":"2003-06-09T16:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2003\/06\/09\/1210.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:43:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:43:23","slug":"another-day-another-rant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2003\/06\/09\/another-day-another-rant\/","title":{"rendered":"Another day, another rant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Speaking<\/a> of Conservative columnists, George Jonas writes<\/a> in Canada's National Post about the lack of evidence of WMDs (yuck, even I use that initialism now ... can one of my Gentle Readers give me an alternative?) and the resulting argument between those who had supported and those who had opposed invasion. I found it a reasonable, interesting, and well-thought-out piece, and not only because I agree with much of its analysis (tho' little of its conclusions).\n\n

The opposition to the invasion appears to be playing the administration's game, and perhaps winning for the moment, but it's still the wrong game. Two months ago, I wrote about the various grounds for opposition to the war<\/a>, and I felt then and feel now that much of that stuff was never clearly articulated in advance of the invasion, and remains muddy now. As a result, the borders of the current debate about what we have found, and what we have done, and whether it was just, are not only unclear, but widely divergent depending on one's point of view, and the conversations appear to be like playing tennis on a court where the players see two different sets of lines. Some points are considered scores by one side and faults by the other, and vice-versa. Sloppy thinking is bad for communication. Recognize it. Avoid it. Call people on it.\n\n

Anyway, the real issue as I see it was never whether the Ba'athists had or didn't have a vial, a vat or a vast amount of weapons, but whether they were a threat (and of course to whom). The presence or absence of weapons was a factor in that, and a large factor I suppose, but as a factor<\/i>, not as a point in and of itself. That's the big difference between a vial and a vat; that's the big difference between a couple of mobile labs that could have been converted back and forth and a, I don't know, report from Dr. Germ to Saddam Hussein saying \"It will be 15 months before we can attack.\"\n\n

If the rationale for the invasion was, as Blair said it was (ignoring for the moment Our Only President and his buddies), that we faced the unpleasant choice of doing something now or regretting not having done it while we grieve for the victims of the attack that would soon come, then what we find or do not find should be judged in the light of that putative attack. Not only have we of the left (we Bush-haters, I'm afraid, to use my earlier category) not been convinced that the threat existed (or at least that it was dire enough to warrant the invasion), but we now doubt that Our Only President and his buddies were convinced that the threat existed. That's what we're on about. That should be the framework of all the Monday-morning analysis.\n\n

Of course, that analysis is important, but, the invasion having been completed, we all know what is more important now.\n\n

Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking of Conservative columnists, George Jonas writes in Canada’s National Post about the lack of evidence of WMDs (yuck, even I use that initialism now … can one of my Gentle Readers give me an alternative?) and the resulting argument…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16785,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions\/16785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}