It's Saletan who is dumb.
The US could never have confronted Iran the way it did Iraq. Iran was and is out of bounds because the Europeans would never allow it. As such, the wasted opportunity is a figment of his imagination.
But most importantly, the US is in fact addressing Iran and the pathologies elsewhere in the region with its actions in Iraq.
By overthrowing Saddam, the US is hoping to trigger reform in the Middle East, a Domino Theory with a democratic spin. The Iranian regime is barely keeping a lid on its dissidents today. Once it becomes clearer that the Iraqis next door are down the path to a free economy, press and elections, I suspect we will achieve everything we wanted in Iran without firing a shot in Tehran.
If Saletan was listening he would have heard Bush refer to Iraq as a trigger of reform in the Middle East many times, including the 2003 state of the union.
"[W]e made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers." -- attributed to Robert E. Lee
In the late 90s, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, North Korea, and Pakistan were considered to be "rogue states" by the U.S. government. Since 9/11, the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan have been replaced, Pakistan is (more or less) an ally in the war on terrorism, North Korea has given up its nuclear weapons programs, Libya has given up it's weapons of mass destruction, and Iran is becoming more isolated.
Say, why don't we get back to discussing "broken army" and how the surge is doomed to fail? [External Link]
The other laughable claim in Saletan's piece is that Europe won't cooperate with the US because Washington "led them astray" with its argument for the Iraq war.
Maybe in a parallel universe. But in the one we currently inhabit European intelligence services independently asserted that Saddam had WMD.
The only thing the Europeans demurred on was the need to cancel their oil contracts with Saddam's regime.
You beat me to it, Chip. Throw in the UN weapons inspectors as well, including Blix, and the incomprehensibly dishonest Scott Ritter.
I know I've posted this quote in past threads over the years, but few past statements better exhibit the lying, fanatical, mass scale revisionism on Iraq than this one from Ritter, one of the key point men in the "Bush Lied" army:
" Iraq has retained components relating to the most recent weapons design, which have not been turned over to the IAEA. These components may be complete enough for assembly into several weapons, lacking only the highly enriched uranium core. They can be moved in a small convoy of three to five vehicles."
Scott Ritter, on Iraq's nuclear weapons program, pages 239-240, from his 1999 book "Endgame, Solving the Iraq Crisis."
It's also highly misleading for The Spiegel story, like the Bob Drogin book titled " Curveball, Spies, Lies, and the Con man Who Caused a War," to depict "Curveball" as the only source for the claim that Saddam was still actively pursuing bio-weapons.
Intelligence services from other nations, including the United States, the Netherlands and Israel had developed intelligence without access to Curveball, which pointed to the same conclusion.
From Ritter's book, page 235:
"There is reason to believe that the Iraqis possess a mobile BW agent production facility, consisting of three to five semi-trailers, containing fermentors and processing equipment. The equipment for use in these mobile facilities probably came from the Italian OLSA company and the Swiss firm Chemap."
That's very specific information, and it's highly unlikely that it came from "Curveball." Drogin mentions Ritter's involvement in the investigation of Saddam's bio-weapons activities, and does a pretty decent job of sanitizing Ritter's irreconcilable flip-flops (largely through ommission), however there's no indication from Drogin that Ritter had any idea Curveball existed.
Everyone I've mentioned this to thinks I've got a crackpot theory, so why not here?
I think Ritter began his turnaround on WMD's because he was a target of Saddam's counterintelligence. They found out his liking for young girls and held it over his head.
Meh, it probably is crackpot.
Mike J, that theory has in fact been widely circulated.
Regardless of what prompted Ritter's about-face on Iraq's WMD, I suspect even he is amazed at the extent of the free pass he and his contradictions received from most of the major American (and foreign) media entities. Luckily for him, professional, ethical journalists are in short supply these days.