as we may blog

CNN reports that the CIA believes high-ranking terrorist Abu Masab al-Zarqawi himself beheaded Nick Berg. Why is this notable? Because the U.S. had several opportunities to kill Zarqawi before the war in Iraq and George Bush refused to do so as it would’ve undermined his flimsy case for war.

"Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn?t do it," said Michael O?Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

"People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president?s policy of preemption against terrorists," according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

Tom Friedman’s op-ed in today’s Times hits the war-as-political-ploy nail right on its crooked head and realizes that he’s been had by the Bush administration:

I admit, I’m a little slow. Because I tried to think about something as deadly serious as Iraq, and the post- 9/11 world, in a nonpartisan fashion ? as Joe Biden, John McCain and Dick Lugar did ? I assumed the Bush officials were doing the same. I was wrong. They were always so slow to change course because confronting their mistakes didn’t just involve confronting reality, but their own politics.

Kevin Drum has similar feelings.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2004 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.