Read the valiant attempt in: “The 18½ Minute Gap“, by a guest blogger on Patterico.

Luckily, I’m not a Yellow Dog Democrat, so I can point out some holes. Like, the false dilemma he sets up. The war may not have been a failure, but we could’ve gone in for the wrong reasons. The Mexican-American War was not a failure by far, but was the US justified in its invasion? But I’ll forgive that. After all, he’s talking about crazy Democrats, right?

This, however, I cannot forgive: “Given how little intelligence we had about that secretive country, the choice was to trust in Saddam Hussein’s restraint and good judgment, or trust in the United States military.” Wait, the reason why we trusted our military is because we had little intelligence?

Without this little piece, the whole article falls apart. The entire article is based on a false dilemma: war or wait for Saddam to develop WMDs. Of course, he assumes that the intent to develop WMDs equals cause for the US to invade. People can intend a lot of things, but if they don’t have the capability to act, then it doesn’t justify using up our military resources, and a whole lot of money, to invade — and occupy! — a country.

My impression is that even with the right intelligence, even if intelligence at the time had said there were no WMDs, he would’ve been in favor of a war. I don’t know about everyone else, but I think war should be a last resort, not a first resort. The fact is, Saddam didn’t pose an imminent threat to the United States, as we had all been tricked into believing.

But wait! What about the Oil-For-Food program?! So, a corrupt UN program is justification for the wholescale invasion of a foreign country? No way, I ain’t buyin’ that.

Because of our failed intelligence, we invaded the one country in the Axis of Evil that wasn’t actually developing WMDs. That, in my books, is not a success.

That said, now that we’re already in there, we must do our best to bring democracy to the region. The ends don’t justify the means, though. If we manage to salvage this mess, it doesn’t justify going to war based on faulty intelligence.