The Case for Law Enforcement

Jon Chait musters more patience than I'm capable of, and explains why you sometimes need a law enforcement approach to terrorism:

[T]errorists often operate in our country, or in friendly countries, which makes military action against them tricky. McCain (through his campaign blog) assailed Obama for favoring "prosecutors rather than predators." But, when the terrorists are holed up in New York City, as was the case with the 1993 bombers Obama referred to, simply arresting them strikes me as more efficient than leveling their apartment with a drone-fired missile.

Now I suppose that knowing how conservatives feel about Western Europe and America's large coastal cities, maybe they do think we should be launching airstrikes in these venues and maybe we shouldn't be giving them ideas.

Comments

Heh. Indeed.

Posted by Joel | June 21, 2008 11:48 AM

McCain's appealing to suburban and rural "heartland" voters who couldn't care less that a big city apartment building got missiled if it might catch a couple terraists.

Heck, they've seen it in movies. Look at what that John McClane guy does in those Die Hard movies.

Posted by Bat of Moon | June 21, 2008 11:54 AM

But, Bat, won't that cut into McCain's appeal in the supposed swing state of New Jersey?

Posted by KCinDC | June 21, 2008 12:03 PM

Amusing as this is, I think your previous take on this is more correct. The Republicans are falsely conflating military tactics with lawlessness--i.e. their "non-law enforcement approach." They don't actually want airstrikes on New York; they want teams of commandos driving around New York capturing brown people and whisking them away to island prisons on the president's say-so.

Posted by southpaw | June 21, 2008 12:10 PM

Good points KCinDC. Many of the people lost in the WTC had lived in NJ, but NJ has continued its disdain of the GOP. Rounding up brown people probably won't go over well here as there are many brown people working in major corps from banking to pharma; dragging Indian-Americans out of their mcmansions in suburban NJ would be a really stoopid idea.

Posted by CParis | June 21, 2008 12:22 PM

Of course, one disadvantage of the law-enforcement model is that you wait until after they've blown up the WTC. That's really the point. Chait and Yglesias, among others, don't see it as a disadvantage, which is why they don't see the point.

Posted by Thomas | June 21, 2008 12:22 PM

You're right, southpaw, except I would only add that Republicans want it done only on a Republican president's say-so. Expect them to suddenly discover their inner civil libertarian once Obama starts asserting executive powers they don't like.

Posted by leftygomez | June 21, 2008 12:23 PM

Now I suppose that knowing how conservatives feel about Western Europe and America's large coastal cities, maybe they do think we should be launching airstrikes in these venues and maybe we shouldn't be giving them ideas.

Gratuitous and over-reaching snark

Posted by Kuros | June 21, 2008 12:24 PM

Exactly when did the lunatic right wing simpletons convince themselves that police, intelligence agencies, or international authorities have to wait until after a crime has occurred to bust in on a criminal or terrorist conpiracy?

Are they really convinced that if a bunch of dudes with gun permits show up outside a bank with rifles and ski-masks in their hands that the police are powerless to do anything but 'wait & see'?

Or is it that they learned about 'law enforcement" from all those '70s and early '80s tough lone wolf cop movies where it takes the one guy willin' ta break the rules - and a few heads har har! - to put the bad guys down?

I'd be laughing at this proto-cellular meme of 'Buh tha problim wif da law 'forsmint izzat u gotta let 'em blowup 'a dam WTC's afor'n u kin do sumpin!' if it weren't just so, so sad.

Posted by El Cid | June 21, 2008 12:34 PM

Of course, one disadvantage of the law-enforcement model is that you wait until after they've blown up the WTC. That's really the point. Chait and Yglesias, among others, don't see it as a disadvantage, which is why they don't see the point.

That's not true. Conspiracy is a crime--as are many of the other likely incidents of planning a terrorist attack. Surely you have a better argument than this.

Posted by southpaw | June 21, 2008 12:38 PM

Re: Of course, one disadvantage of the law-enforcement model is that you wait until after they've blown up the WTC.

Um, no. You can certainly arrest people who are plotting to do such things. "Conspiracy to commit murder (etc.)" is a crime.

Posted by JonF | June 21, 2008 12:39 PM

Exactly when did the lunatic right wing simpletons convince themselves that police, intelligence agencies, or international authorities have to wait until after a crime has occurred to bust in on a criminal or terrorist conpiracy?

I was listening to this guy go on about ANWR and when I mentioned that if you upped the ante and threw in not just ANWR but every last known off-shore oil deposit you wind up cutting .50 off a barrel of oil in the 2020's and cutting the price of a gallon of oil by $.06 he didn't argue. He just said "you don't want to do anything".

They don't want to hear about not being able to do something. If the solution is foolish or even nonsensical (like the magical thinking that they were going to scare the hell out of all the Muslims by bombing Iraq) it doesn't matter because it's *something*.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 21, 2008 1:19 PM

Um, no. You can certainly arrest people who are plotting to do such things. "Conspiracy to commit murder (etc.)" is a crime.
Posted by JonF

Yeah, sure, except that little thing called sufficient evidence to meet the burdern of proof to prosecute.
Despite being questioned by airport security and by Customs, by complaints of passengers witnessing their scary "dry runs" on flights before 9/11, and by Visa background check - many of the officers were convinced that Atta and his enemy combatant teams were up to no good. But they lacked evidence of a criminal plot.

So the 1st time the "law enforcement" could kick into gear was when the 1st person on one of the hijacked flights had their throat slit. THEN the Majesty and Magnificent deterrent effect of The Law could kick in. Oooops, too late!

Shame Atta and friends didn't realize how successful the prosecution and legal case was against bin Laden after the 1st attempt the Jihadis made to blow up the WTC. Why, they even had criminal indictments and WARRANTS against Binnie by 1998!

The WTC may have fallen, thousands may have died, but the law enforcement approach was a brilliant success! Why, they got convictions of a few of the Muslim terrorists!!

Posted by chris ford | June 21, 2008 1:32 PM

I have to differ with Chait/Matt. This explanation is really inadequate, and is the type of thing that makes us look bad- we shouldn't put it on a website.

Any Republican could just say / figure out: "Of course we should arrest them if they're here-- but they're supported by leaders and training camps in areas in foreign states that are far from friendly to us, and even if we caught a few guys here, the balance of the organization could evade far too easily in one of these areas without us bringing in the military to take it over or drop some bombs."

It wouldn't be a great answer, but it would be answer enough for the Republicans to what John Chait wrote. They'd think that they'd proved that they were right and liberals were wrong, and wouldn't want to listen to any more argument. They'd be satisfied once again that we're "dumb" and don't understand anything important, and shouldn't be let within 100 miles of pulling the strings of anti-terrorism operations.

At that point we'd have to say that it's not just about an absolute choice between law enforcement or military, but about which should be used more. I think this shows how when people say stuff like what Chait said, they are missing that the debate is really about whether the gravamen of the war on terror should be about police investigation and enforcement or about military action- not whether only police actions or only military operations should be allowed. Talking about this debate in other terms is unintelligible. When you launch an unnecessary war on a place like Iraq which isn't even where Al Qaeda is, on the justification of the possibility that Iraq is one state that might help Al Qaeda some day, you turn the gravamen of the operation over to the military in a way that fires up all our concerns about over-use of the military, perhaps because it takes so much manpower to try to enforce order in that country you've conquered. Whether we should use more military or more police is just another way to talk about whether we should use this war as a pretense to launch every war the oil industry would like us to to secure their families' and friends' (re: rich, blue-blood people who control huge gasoline/oil corporations) pocket books.

Posted by Swan | June 21, 2008 1:32 PM

Chris Ford wrote:

The WTC may have fallen, thousands may have died, but the law enforcement approach was a brilliant success! Why, they got convictions of a few of the Muslim terrorists!!

Maybe Chris Ford forgot about Bill Clinton launching cruise missiles at Bin Laden, trying to fry his ass? Maybe if the CIA had been a little more behind him, Clinton would have pulled it off (Can't you imagine some Rush-Limbaugh loving CIA idiot keeping the location of Bin Laden in his pocket for a conservative to take advantage of when the time was right?). Anyway, I've never heard of either Bush I or II coming withing a mile of launching a cruise missile at Bin Laden.

Seems to me there barely was a law enforcement or a military approach in the months before 9/11, because Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condi were too focused on pretending that WWIII with Russia or China was still really going to happen, so that big breaks and contracts had to be given to all their golf and drinking buddies in the energy and weapons industry. Who can be bothered (that is, what kind of Republican rich asshole can be bothered) with mundane terrorist-hunting when there are deals to negotiate! They smelled 'em some gold and some silver!

Posted by Swan | June 21, 2008 1:50 PM

The turn of the last century saw plentiful political assassinations, a tool for the new movement anarchy (and nihilism). The logical response was not to declare war on assassination, or war on anarchy; it was to arrest people who committed a crime and try them. Simply in terms of how much dignity you grant these people, I think treating them as criminals is clearly better than treating them as soldiers of a stateless regime one takes as seriously as a state. (In fact, not having a home address should pretty much preclude treating any group as a state. )

Posted by Deborah | June 21, 2008 1:52 PM

Also, we arrested the terrorists behind the plot to attack LAX before they could carry out the plot.

Posted by Reality Man | June 21, 2008 2:17 PM

Err, it may have been logical but that sure as hell wasn't what happened.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 21, 2008 2:26 PM

Shorter Thomas: "law enforcement" is a completely ineffective way of stopping organized crime; after all, even if you have evidence a murder is about to be committed, you can't arrest anyone before the murder because laws against conspiracy don't exist! The only solution is to bomb some countries at random in which there is some organized crime (albeit none that actually operates in the United States.) Now that's effective!

Posted by Scott Lemieux | June 21, 2008 2:40 PM

It's almost funny. I mean, I recall, what, 1000 posts over at TPM making fun of the Bush administration's attempts to prosecute folks for terrorism-related conspiracy. The folks on the left prefer law enforcement precisely because it is less effective, and they prefer less aggressive law enforcement as well. It's because they--you--don't care. Clever folks like Scott can miss the point all they want. And folks like Deborah can remain ignorant of the facts: a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan in, say, 1999, should be addressed with a military solution, not by see whether there's sufficient evidence to arrest those present on conspiracy charges. If we'd actually tried that it's possible that 9/11 could have been avoided. Instead we had a president doing what Swan approved of, a man who dreamed of sending ninjas after bin Laden, instead of seriously addressing the issue.

Posted by Thomas | June 21, 2008 2:57 PM

The folks on the left prefer law enforcement precisely because it is less effective

The folks on the right prefer killing people just because they like killing people.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 21, 2008 3:07 PM

The perplexing thing to me is why heartland conservatives are so desperate to protect America's large coastal cities by sending their noble, patriotic sons to fight an irrelevant war. The average resident of Manhattan NY has way more to fear from al-Qaida than the average resident of Manhattan KS. But you don't see the average New Yorker clamoring for war on the off-chance it might save his own ass. No: you see the average Kansan strutting and puffing and proclaiming himself the real patriot -- all the while denouncing the godless hedonist liberalism of America's large coastal cities.

I say it's time we Americans who live in large coastal cities tell the heartland patriots to have a nice cup of cocoa and let US worry about how best to protect al-Qaida's actual targets -- the large coastal cities WE live in.

-- TP

Posted by Tony P. | June 21, 2008 3:09 PM

In January 1993 Mir Aimal Kasi shot five people outside CIA headquarters and fled to the same border area of Pakistan where Osama bin Laden is likely hiding. The FBI captured him in June 1997 and he was executed in November 2002. But that was a soft-on-terror Democratic administration using law enforcement techniques.

Bin Laden killed 3,000 people and the Bush administration has given him a pass, as it has with the anthrax attacks, which President Bush called "a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country."

Posted by kirkaracha | June 21, 2008 3:16 PM

I bet you money that the anthrax guy had a freerepublic.com account when that went down.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 21, 2008 3:19 PM

"terrorist training camp in Afghanistan in, say, 1999, should be addressed with a military solution"

You mean like the way ,Bush when given evidence that Kurdish Iaq was harbouring terrorists refused to bomb them.

In case it interfered with his desire to attack non-terrorists in the non-kurdish iraq?

Posted by kb | June 21, 2008 3:37 PM

kirk, that's a great example. You think it's a success that the CIA let Kasi shoot five people outside CIA headquarters because he was later arrested, convicted and punished. I wouldn't count that as an example of success, but you and Matt and Chait obviously would. That's the point of difference in approach.

Posted by Thomas | June 21, 2008 4:25 PM

You think it's a success that the CIA let Kasi shoot five people outside CIA headquarters because he was later arrested, convicted and punished. I wouldn't count that as an example of success, but you and Matt and Chait obviously would.

Shorter Thomas: Minority Report was an awesome movie. I'm not sure I totally understood it though.

Posted by southpaw | June 21, 2008 4:38 PM

Thomas, what's your better idea? Was there any proof beforehand that Kasi had any plans to kill Americans? If so, then the solution was to arrest Kasi earlier. There is no real military solution for killing a single individual without massive, self-defeating blowback. I guess we should just invade all of Pakistan in case there are more people like Kasi there and have our mind readers kill all the potential Pakistani Kasis. You have no actual argument here.

"And folks like Deborah can remain ignorant of the facts: a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan in, say, 1999, should be addressed with a military solution, not by see whether there's sufficient evidence to arrest those present on conspiracy charges. If we'd actually tried that it's possible that 9/11 could have been avoided. Instead we had a president doing what Swan approved of, a man who dreamed of sending ninjas after bin Laden, instead of seriously addressing the issue.

Posted by Thomas | June 21, 2008 2:57 PM"

Except that the likes of Atta et al were most likely in Europe (where they became radicalized), not Afghanistan, during most of that time frame. Should we instead have bombed Germany to kill Atta? Nobody here has said we should never have military solutions against terrorist training camps - in fact, several people here have defended Clinton's use of air strikes - so instead, you are arguing against a strawman because you have no argument to make.

Posted by Reality Man | June 21, 2008 4:46 PM

Reality, the biggest difference is this: faced with hundreds of al Qaeda training in camps in Afghanistan, a law enforcement approach says, "well, obviously they're up to no good, but there's no evidence that they're targeting the US in particular, so there's nothing criminal about what they're doing." A military approach says, "our enemy is training in Afghanistan, so we should consider destroying the camp and killing the enemy." And a military approach doesn't blink--as the Clinton administration did--because of the chance that bin Laden would be killed.

Atta was in Afghanistan in 1999, training. Not the entire time, but then again the camps were there more than he was at the camps.

Posted by Thomas | June 21, 2008 5:17 PM

And a military approach doesn't blink--as the Clinton administration did--because of the chance that bin Laden would be killed.

What do you think we were trying to do with the Tomahawks? Have them serve papers on him?

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 21, 2008 5:26 PM

I say it's time we Americans who live in large coastal cities tell the heartland patriots to have a nice cup of cocoa

Or a nice latte.

and let US worry about how best to protect al-Qaida's actual targets -- the large coastal cities WE live in.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | June 21, 2008 7:02 PM

Ed, I'm referring to this episode, described in the 9/11 Commission Report:

The decision was made not to go ahead with the operation.“Mike”
cabled the field that he had been directed to “stand down on the operation for
the time being.” He had been told, he wrote, that cabinet-level officials thought
the risk of civilian casualties—“collateral damage”—was too high.They were
concerned about the tribals’ safety, and had worried that “the purpose and
nature of the operation would be subject to unavoidable misinterpretation and
misrepresentation—and probably recriminations—in the event that Bin Ladin,
despite our best intentions and efforts, did not survive.”

Posted by Thomas | June 21, 2008 8:03 PM

Everybody is a fucking moron.

You cannot deal with terrorists in a military manner.

"Training camps"? Irrelevant. So you blow up a bunch of tents and an ammo dump, not to mention the guys in it. They're replaced next week.

You deal with terrorist groups by adjusting your foreign policy. There are almost NO terrorist groups who really give a damn about the continental United States. What they care about is the US influence and meddling in THEIR country and US support for fucking Israel.

Cut Israel off. Cut the Egyptians and the Saudis and the Jordanians off.

Fuck them. What have they ever done for us but get us targeted by terrorists?

If the US stopped supporting Israel and pressured Israel to get rid of its nuclear arsenal and pressured Israel to deal fairly with the Palestinians, bin Laden would do a U-turn in his attitude toward the US in five minutes.

Then if you STILL have a few groups trying to conduct terrorism against US citizens at home or abroad, then you resort to the usual methods of counterintelligence: infiltration, bribery, etc.

You don't sit around and wait for them to blow something up. You spy on them, you infiltrate them, you find their leaders, you set them up and arrest the whole lot at once. Most of these groups are small.

The broader issue of terrorism against the US by the NETWORK of these small groups is a result of bad foreign policy. Eliminate the bad foreign policies, most of these groups couldn't care less about the US.

You might also remember that the other reason the US let bin Laden live is because he's more useful out there as a boogey-man than as a convict.

Once again, I make my standard offer: a billion in advance, bin Laden in ninety days (assuming he's still alive - Benazir Bhutto said Mullah Omar killed him in 2003).

No takers? Guess you don't want him as bad as you claim.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 21, 2008 9:13 PM

I like the idea that the evidence threshold for blowing someone the fuck up with a missile is less burdensome than the evidence threshold for arresting them.

Take THAT Enlightenment and hundreds of years of Western legal tradition.

Posted by TheF79 | June 21, 2008 9:33 PM

Maybe the two greatest reasons right wingers oppose the "law enforcement approach" to fighting terrorism are that:

(1) They are generally opposed to laws in general, and while they support throwing lots of people in jail, it's not because of those peoples' violations of the law, but conservatives' desire to imprison people;

and

(2) They are opposed to such an approach because they fear it might be effective, and thus would rob them of the excuse to use terrorism to go after their real goal, which is the wars they want.

Their goal isn't to stop or fight terrorism, but to pursue all the wars that they want; terrorism is simply a convenient tool they may use to convince politicians, institutions and the public to go along with the wars they so desperately crave.

Posted by El Cid | June 21, 2008 9:40 PM

"Shorter Thomas: Minority Report was an awesome movie. I'm not sure I totally understood it though."

Cascades of soda come squirting through the nose.

Well bowled, southpaw ... well bowled, indeed...

Posted by AWH | June 21, 2008 10:01 PM

Let's not forget the plot to destroy several crossings into Manhattan, which was broken up by the NYPD thanks to an informer.

The military vs. law enforcement role in the fight against terrorism is really a false dichotomy. Both have a role, although the military role is far more limited than its proponents (and the Bush administration) think it is. (Think training, logistical and intelligence support, use of drones, small units.)

Posted by Tom S | June 21, 2008 10:42 PM

If terrorists were holed up in NYC, McCain would invade Venezuala. Terrorists simply don't have good targets to bomb, only states do. Rummy taught us that.

Posted by Owen | June 21, 2008 11:49 PM

El Cid demonstrates an astonishing lack of insight into his bete noir "right-wingers", many of whom are actual law enforcement advocates in Real Life.

One of the reasons for our failed response to the initial collapse of Ba'athist Iraq was that we had a lot of law-enforcement types ordering soldiers to run around rousting Iraqis out of their homes at 2 am to seize rifles of the sort kept, with considerably less rational justification, by tens of millions of Americans.

Obviously, we need a lot more law enforcement for terrorists, which could be efficiently provided by de-criminalizing drugs and diverting the resources from the Global War on Drugs (tm) to actually combating terrorism, instead of abetting it as our current policy is doing.

Posted by robert powell | June 22, 2008 5:25 AM

Actually, contra Robert Powell, I demonstrated an all too ordinary presence of insight into quite a lot of right wingers who not only visit these message boards but who write and speak all across the net and in right wing think tank groups.

He would prefer to imagine that all advocates of bombing Iraq, Iran and elsewhere are the pained, bloatedly moralizing type that he himself is. But the category of war mongering rightists is no bete noire, but a perfectly extant category.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/06/why-wasnt-aq-kh.html

He's perfectly happy suggesting that liberals and leftists supported Saddam's genocide in Iraq, but if you point out all the warhawk screechers out there, suddenly the good perfesser gits his hackles up.

It's easier, though, to be a pompous moralizer.

(Nice attempted dodge with the ridiculous point about how attempts to barge into Iraqi homes to confiscate weapons is part of a "law enforcement approach," although it's sad enough an effort that even Powell himself has a tough time trying to pretend he thinks it's relevant.)

But if Robert Powell wants to suddenly claim that his demands to properly enforce UN Security Council resolutions against Saddam Hussein should not in any sense whatsoever be viewed as a "law enforcement approach", well, bless his little heart.

Posted by El Cid | June 22, 2008 6:15 AM

"Reality, the biggest difference is this: faced with hundreds of al Qaeda training in camps in Afghanistan, a law enforcement approach says, "well, obviously they're up to no good, but there's no evidence that they're targeting the US in particular, so there's nothing criminal about what they're doing." A military approach says, "our enemy is training in Afghanistan, so we should consider destroying the camp and killing the enemy." And a military approach doesn't blink--as the Clinton administration did--because of the chance that bin Laden would be killed."

Nice false dichotomy there. Do you really believe this is how anyone actually sees the world or are you just being silly on purpose? Nobody here, and I repeat nobody, has said we shouldn't bomb AQ training camps when we have good intelligence. However, care has to be taken with any military initiative to prevent blowback and thus self-defeat. After all, it's not like we responded to 9/11 by nuking Afghanistan in part because the blowback would be too large. However, Kasi was active in the US and committed his attack in the US before escaping to Pakistan. How were we supposed to bomb Kasi in the US?

Posted by Reality Man | June 22, 2008 9:26 AM

Credit where credit's due--El Cid is dead right in asserting that "the law enforcement approach" required enforcing the UN Resolutions on Iraq, and that the American public has been rather warlike in its attitudes about being dragged into a war by a totalitarian police state.

I do not nor have I ever advocated bombing Iran, or suggested that "liberals and leftists supported Saddam's genocide in Iraq". Ignored and/or minimized it for political effect,though, absolutely. That was a pretty bi-partisan approach for years.

Posted by robert powell | June 22, 2008 12:19 PM

I do not nor have I ever advocated bombing Iran, or suggested that "liberals and leftists supported Saddam's genocide in Iraq". Ignored and/or minimized it for political effect,though, absolutely.

Posted by robert powell

Hee hee. You really are funny. "Hey, just 'cause I called you appeasers of genocidalists, there's no need to get all puffy about it!"

Also, thanks for proving my point -- the "law enforcement approach" is praised by the hawks when it lends support for wars that they want, and they deride this thing they call "the law enforcement approach" when it seems to get in the way of one.

Posted by El Cid | June 22, 2008 12:32 PM

Yes, Conservatives do love Western Civilization...except all its civilized bits. Only girls like those parts.

Posted by Robert | June 22, 2008 4:42 PM

El Cid, I think the reason rightwingers don't want to fight terrorism through police action is that this would leave no room for the concept of "war" - and therefore no room for war powers.

The Bush administration clearly thinks of terrorism as an opportunity to be grasped with both hands, not as a problem to be solved. So the question whether police work would be more effective than military overreach, is moot. They'll choose the military option anyway.

Posted by Hans B | June 22, 2008 7:44 PM

Powell: "I do not nor have I ever advocated bombing Iran,"

No, you just want to try to confuse people as to whether or not it's likely to happen under Bush. So you keep saying, "Gee, it will never happen" - even as Israel conducts a full-scale rehearsal.

Which makes you, as usual, a lying POS.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 22, 2008 8:18 PM

I think it's simply inaccurate to say that "right wingers don't want to fight terrorism through police action". Basically anyone who wants to fight terrorism and knows anything about doing so recognizes that "police action" is by far the most effective technique for a variety of reasons. There are such people right across the political spectrum. I believe some particularly hackish Republicans used this meme in a lame election-year stunt, but that doesn't make the idea "right wing". Hard to say if it had any effect, but it certainly didn't impress me much.

Liberals and leftists, at least some of them, were willing to if not appease then effectively give a pass to Saddam and his genocidal regime--punishing the population while letting the regime off the hook doesn't count. There are some unfortunates who really believe that Koffi Annan's off the cuff remarks on television have more legal weight than the proper elected authorities in dozens of the world's most important democracies, but for serious-minded people the only thing "illegal" about invading Iraq was the length of time it took to finally decide to do so and the innocent deaths caused by the delay.

I suppose arguing that enforcing the Resolutions was "illegal" in spite of all the evidence to the contrary might be described as "supporting Saddam", but I think it was more realistically just a combination of partisan bias and ignorance of the situation. If it had convinced more than a handful in Congress, Parliament, etc. it might have amounted to support for Saddam, but of course the argument fell flat then as now.

Posted by robert powell | June 23, 2008 2:00 PM