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Jennifer Rubin at Commentary:
Senior Brookings fellows Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack gave a report today and entertained questions at a Brookings briefing on Iraq. It was the single most illuminating presentation I have witnessed on the status of Iraq and the potential way forward. Neither man can be accused of shilling for either the administration or John McCain for numerous reasons: both have been strong critics of the war and O’Hanlon opposed the war and still believes on balance it has not made us safer.
Bzzzzt!
Michael O’Hanlon 2/5/03:
A Time For WarIn his State of the Union address last week, President Bush was unpersuasive in his claims of Iraqi progress towards a nuclear weapon and of supposedly significant ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet, the president was still convincing on his central point that the time for war is near. Even those of us who have questioned the case for war over the last year, and who do not buy all of the Bush administration’s arguments for invasion even today, need to face the fact that there soon will be no other plausible option.
In taking this basic approach, Mr. Bush heeded the counsel of multilateralists, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, the elder President Bush, Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Tony Blair and many Democrats. It is now time for multilateralists to support the president.
The multilateralist approach to Iraq was the right way to go. Otherwise, any U.S. invasion of Iraq, however justified and however desirable for the people of Iraq, could have had huge consequences.
As for Ken Pollack:
They are both Very Serious People.
9 Comments
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I’ll be glad when I can put my poor can of Cognitive Dissonance back on the shelf. It has been heavily abused by the current administration.
You’d think the humiliation of being outed as a lying shill for the worst president ever would be enough to make one crawl under a rock and hibernate.
Are you kidding? They’re in line for a spot on the NYTimes editorial page.
They’ll fit right in next to little Billy Kristol.
I just heard O’Hanlon pontificating on NPR this morning about how the Democrats are all atwitter over nothing regarding the casual agreement Bush wants to get Iraq to agree to, and the U.S. doesn’t want a treaty because that would be excessive, and the next president won’t have any problem at all if al Maliki would just relax and give Bush what he wants.
And because O’Hanlon is such a serious and wise man, now I’m not the least bit afraid…
With this latest outbreak of revisionism, Mary Matalin will soon be called an opponent of the war, her WHIG membership notwithstanding.
And we have no white board operator to question it anymore.
*sniff*
I find it darkly amusing that the Administration voted “Most Likely to Ignore International Agreements, Treaties, Compacts, and Conventions” expects to sign an agreement binding us to long-term presence in Iraq and have subsequent Administrations honor it.
Do as they say, not as they do, I guess…
Why are these people not in prison yet?
Please see the next post, plus the link to John Cole and I think you’ll have your answer.