Pitts Jr. -- Saddam Capture Doesn't Justify War

[HuckleB]

LEONARD PITTS JR./COMMENTARY

Hussein's fate doesn't justify the war in Iraq

It was, make no mistake, a very satisfying image.

Saddam Hussein, the erstwhile butcher of Baghdad, looking grizzled, frazzled and not unlike a homeless transient -- which, come to think of it, he was -- as he submitted to a medical examination, courtesy of his captors, the United States Army.

....

The question of the week, however, seems to be whether it is satisfying enough to invalidate opposition to the war. Some pundits have suggested that it is. Indeed, Howard Dean made headlines simply for affirming that he still thinks invading Iraq was a bad idea -- a statement his fellow Democratic contenders for the presidency jumped on as a starving man does an all-you-can-eat buffet.

....

But it's Lieberman -- and anyone else who thinks Hussein's humiliation validates the Iraq war -- who's in denial.

You feel like an ant at a picnic for pointing this out. Indeed, the only thing that might feel more awkward than standing aside from the celebratory conga line would be to join it. Because joining it requires one to conveniently forget that the reason we went to war was not to find Hussein, but to find weapons of mass destruction, which, we were told, represented a clear and present danger to our security. Those weapons are yet to be found, and the suspicion is strong that they simply do not exist, that calamitous failures of intelligence led the nation to spend time, treasure and lives on a war that did not need to be fought.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/7526394.htm

[candy331]

1. Ottsider? Insider? Who the

hell cares at this point? The country is sinking with this administration and someone needs to throw out a life raft to save it. To sit and argue over who will do it while the ship keeps sinking is meaningless, in the meantime the ship is still sinking sowly but surely.

[HuckleB]

2. That's not really the main point of the piece.