Monday, July 28, 2003

Leiberman in the middle

AP via WaPo here:

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman on Monday faulted President Bush for a lack of planning for a post-Saddam Iraq while he assailed his rivals for opposing the conflict, saying, "they don't know a just war when they see it."

Critical of his foes for the party nomination but reticent to name names, the Connecticut senator defended his strong support for U.S.-led military action, arguing that 12 years of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime warranted the military campaign to oust him.

But he also criticized the Bush administration for its lack of preparedness in dealing with postwar Iraq and its distortion of intelligence.

Earlier, in an appearance on NBC's "Today" show, Lieberman said the U.S. military didn't move quickly enough to secure sites where weapons of mass destruction were being made.

"Some of them may have have been moved out on the market and may be moving around," he said. "We did not prepare to bring the Iraqis into control of their own government more quickly."

That the administration let WMDs loose on the black market—the very ones that it fought the war (supposedly) to control—that's an idea I can get behind propagating... Gives a whole new dimension to the concept of privatization, doesn't it?

Just war? I dunno.

Looks like a nastly little imperial skirmish to me, the sort of thing Kipling wrote of—the savage wars of peace—but, in today's globalized world, a skirmish with incalculably greater consequences. Like the nukes that the brass hats and the neo-con professors didn't secure, floating around...

Troll prophylactic: Saddam is evil.

NOTE: Notice Lieberman not forming circular firing squad by keeping the focus on policy, and on Bush.