May 12, 2004 | "It doesn't matter," insisted the war's enthusiasts, when Saddam Hussein's allegedly massive arsenal of forbidden weapons was not found. It didn't matter, these same sages claimed, that the Bush administration had exaggerated evidence and misled America and the world about the justification for invading Iraq. It wouldn't matter, they chirped, that the Pentagon had ignored ample warnings about the likely postwar conditions in Iraq and failed to guard against rampant looting and criminality with adequate preparation. It didn't matter that our leaders had prevaricated about the mythical Iraqi nuclear program, the mobile bioweapons laboratories, the yellowcake from Niger, the unmanned aerial vehicles, and the whole panoply of fearsome but nonexistent reasons to wage war.
None of these unpleasant discoveries could possibly keep the "mission" from being accomplished in Iraq, the war's sponsors argued, and anyone who insisted on discussing those facts was just trying to score partisan points. The only thing that mattered, they assured us, was that we freed the Iraqis from torture and murder and injustice. America's cause was just and American hearts were pure.
In the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib atrocities, we are now learning just how mistaken and how dangerous those Pollyanna predictions were. At a moment of terrible shame for the United States, the credibility squandered by the White House in the months leading up to the war has left the nation morally defenseless before the world. The only way left to defend the disastrous war was as a war of liberation, to free Iraqis from shame and torture. Once it is shown that we imposed shame and torture, too,
the last rationale for the war is gone. When George W. Bush grudgingly apologized for the crimes committed in our name, who believed that he was sorry? When Bush and the members of his cabinet and general staff promise to take responsibility and do justice, who believes that they will fulfill those pledges? Americans may believe, but the hearts and minds of other people around the world -- especially Arabs and Muslims -- are closed.
<snip>
Indeed, Rumsfeld personifies the ruinous combination of deception, arrogance and incompetence that has so badly damaged the war effort from the very beginning. His role has been so ruinous, in fact, that even some of the most enthusiastically hawkish pundits, such as George Will and Andrew Sullivan, are belatedly coming to recognize that
utopian dreams of democratic imperialism have turned into a nightmare of colonial occupation. But the secretary of defense reflects nothing more or less than the president's policies and attitudes, which is why he still has his position.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/12/rumsfeld/index.html
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