Administration's war justifications hollow

Cabinet members took to the airwaves yesterday to defend the decision to go to war with Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried to deflect the fire the administration is coming under since no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have been found in Iraq.

Despite the lack of weapons or any WMD programs, the sectaries said this in no way weakened the merits of the invasion. Instead, the administration is now emphasizing the humanitarian nature of the mission.

Powell acknowledged that the U.S. might not find any WMD stockpiles, and that they might not have even existed. Despite nearly a year of searching, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the weapons might still turn up. But both said no intelligence had been altered, and that the administration had no idea that its information was false.

For those who opposed the decision to invade Iraq, that's the point.

The argument that Hussein had WMDs seemed weak even when the U.S. was lobbying the U.N to go to war, and some officials are saying the Bush administration cherry-picked the intelligence. Similar claims are being lobbed against British Prime Minister Tony Blair by officials in that country's intelligence community.

The fact that Powell now admits "we didn't know" underscores the fact that the case for WMD in Iraq was tenuous even then. Many liberals, far from being the pacifists the right makes them out to be, opposed the war because the exigency of the situation simply was not there. If there was not a clear and present danger, than there seems little reason to have angered so many around the world by shrugging off the U.N. and the opinion of our allies.

If nothing else, America's decision to go it almost alone means it has shouldered most of the extraordinary human and financial cost. Rumsfeld, who refers often to the "broad based coalition," said that with over 60 nations participating, the U.S. was hardly alone. He neglected to mention that many of America's closest allies were completely opposed to the invasion. The participation of almost all the other nations, save Britian, was more symbolic than anything.

And while the Bush administration paints a rosy picture about democracy in Iraq, its version of the situation does not square with reality. The country is dangerously unstable, and some have said civil war could break out. In any case, we did not go to war to liberate Iraq. If the Iraqi invasion was about democracy, President Bush would not have sold the war on WMD fears.

The apparent underestimation of how volatile Iraq is suggests that democratizing the country was at best an afterthought. Certainly the Iraqi people are better off today than a year ago, but they are paying the price for the post-war instability. If the Iraqi invasion was about nation-building, one would think the administration would have thought out the post-war rebuilding of the country more thoroughly. Had that occurred, it is possible the situation would not be quite so grim.

Saddam Hussein's regime was brutally tyrannical and in all likelihood military action would have been necessary at some point. He defied the U.N. at every opportunity. He had used chemical and biological weapons against innocent people in the past. He publicly supported terrorism. But all these justifications, cited often by Bush administration officials, cannot cover up the truth about WMD in Iraq.

The entire world was saying that our WMD evidence was thin, and their viewpoint was completely vindicated. Though troubling, the evidence was never solid enough to justify the immediate invasion of Iraq. The U.S. had time to wait, gather more support and information, and do a better job of liberating the Iraqi people.