(Sarcastic) E-mail: “Of all the NRO editorials I have read, this one the most insightful, especially the first paragraph: ‘Bush’s speech last night heralded a shift away from WMD in making the case for the war on Iraq to the three P’s: politics, prestige, and preemption.’ It’s a brief paragraph, but it captures the essence of standard NRO analysis perfectly: an observation is made, but as dictated by ideology, its obvious implications are avoided when drawing a conclusion. You are correct, Bush has shifted away from Iraqi WMD. Is this basic fact of no significance at the NRO?”

I didn’t mean to imply in my piece that Bush has abandoned the WMD argument entirely. It was one of the reasons for invading Iraq, and rightly so. It was Saddam’s obligation to demonstrate that he didn’t a WMD capability–he didn’t do that. In fact, to my mind, there was no way to guarantee that Saddam didn’t have a WMD capability short of denying him the apparatus of a modern state–which we have now done. Meanwhile, there were plenty of other reasons for going into Iraq, which have now begun to get emphasized.