So the report concluded that there was “no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991” and further, that no significant efforts were underway to produce WMDs.  The Bush administration responded the only way it could: by taking another step back into the corner. 

Leave aside the fact that the Vice President artfully avoided the gist of the report in his attempt to spin an ugly report for the Bush camp into at least a push.  Cheney relies on the notion that Saddam “had every intention of going back" to try and build WMDs if the opportunity arose.  It occurred to me that in our own nation’s criminal justice system, we rarely punish people for intent alone.  Thinking about robbing a bank isn’t a crime.  Thinking about running a red light isn’t a crime.  Wanting to rob a bank or to run a red light isn’t a crime either.  Rightly, our nation’s laws almost always require concrete steps toward actually breaking the law—not just an inclination or desire—for a person to be charged with a criminal offense.  People are not punished for merely wanting to do bad things; it’s inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the American system.  Even when people agitate or state that they want to do these bad things, they haven’t committed a crime until they actually cross the line between intent and attempt. 

And yet, retrospectively, the Bush-Cheney administration justifies the War in Iraq on Saddam’s intent, his desire to have weapons of mass destruction.  A thinner string to hang such an albatross on one cannot find.  How many leaders of nations would like to have nuclear or chemical weapons?  Will the barometer of whether a nation wants weapons of mass destruction be the test we use in deciding where to next flex our military might?  He’s really grasping at straws here. 

Will this game still play with the American people?  No weapons.  No serious or remotely successful efforts underway to make weapons.  In other words, there was no imminent threat. 

Bush justifies this war as self-defense; after 9/11, we are entitled as a nation to defend ourselves—preemptively if necessary—against future terrorist attacks.  Imminent as in immediate and impending, not as in “possible if X, Y, and Z happen and Saddam has a couple years to work unimpeded on his weapons.”  Many nations are threatening in general; it’s no secret that we have enemies as a country.  (We used to have friends too, but that’s a story for another day—don’t worry, I’m not forgetting Poland here.)   But vaguely threatening is not the same as an imminent threat, and the imminent threat posed by Saddam and his WMD programs was the principal argument advanced by the Bush administration to get Congressional and public support for the war. 

Turns out the claims of an imminent threat were so much dust in the wind.  Faced with an election less than a month away, the administration seems to be backing slowly into a corner—at least in terms of rhetoric.  Will they withdraw our troops from Iraq after the election?  Surely—there won’t be another Republican administration for a couple decades if American GIs continue to die by the dozen every week.  But for now, Bush and Cheney are rejecting the possibility that they could fess up to the reality of the situation and say they’ll do what needs to be done.  Electoral prudence dictates that they circle the wagons, admit no mistakes until Election Day. 

Here’s what I’d ask Vice President Cheney: If the most recent report were released two weeks before the invasion of Iraq, would the war have ever even happened?  Would the death of over a thousand American troops and countless Iraqis still be justified if there were no imminent threat whatsoever, if the sanctions were working and effectively preventing Saddam from producing WMDs?  Most importantly, how many more people will die because your administration mistook Saddam’s pipe dreams as a serious threat?