EDITORIAL- No WMDs or weapons program in Iraq

Well, it’s conclusive: There were no WMDs. There were, however, many SOBs, probably some… Well, it’s conclusive: There were no WMDs. There were, however, many SOBs, probably some BLTs and, maybe, just maybe, one JBC — that’s a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, if you don’t go to Wendy’s.

A report issued yesterday by the chief U.S. arms inspector, Charles Duelfer, a Central Intelligence Agency special adviser, found that, while there were abandoned weapons programs, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was not actively developing weapons of mass destruction.

This report means that the United States’ chief justification for invading Iraq and deposing Hussein was unsupported, and that President George W. Bush’s assertions that Iraq was a real and growing threat to U.S. security were false.

Both the president and Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., have supported the invasion, even with the scant evidence to back up searching for WMDs. Bush, speaking yesterday, said that Saddam “had a history of using weapons of mass destruction,” according to an Associated Press article. In the same article, he also mentioned Hussein and Sept. 11, 2001, in the same breath, flogging a connection between Hussein and Osama Bin Laden that never existed.

There is mounting evidence that other nations are more of a threat to U.S. security than Iraq was. Notably, Iran said yesterday that it has processed several tons of uranium, in defiance of the orders issued this month by the International Atomic Energy Agency — which reports to the United Nations — to cease such processing.

This uranium is the stuff that several memos, now debunked, said Iraq was importing. The president cited these as evidence for Iraq developing WMDs, which, as the report today shows, it wasn’t.

In addition, Kerry, in response to comments made Tuesday by L. Paul Bremer, a former U.S. administrator in occupied Iraq, also stated that he would have voted to support the invasion, even knowing then what we know now.

If Kerry is to distance himself from Bush, then the first thing he should question is Bush’s Iraq policy. Kerry has criticized Bush’s methods, saying that we should have gone to war, just in a different way. This seems like glorified fence straddling.

It was grotesquely irresponsible to lead a country into a war and an occupation on false pretenses. While no one contests that Hussein was a threat — a threat put into power by the United States — he was a threat to his own people, whom he mistreated, starved and slaughtered, and not to our national security.

But, now that we’ve waged a war, we must take responsibility for our actions. The key question in November, to paraphrase Ronald Regan, will be whether we are better off than we were four years ago. Hopefully, we, and the Iraqi people, will be able to say yes.