Conason: "Afghanistan, Messy. Iraq, Doable." -Wolfowitz

Joe Conason is unlike most other columnists. Where a ton of news sources today are taking the Bush wackos' word that the Iraq project was started by Clinton, Conason will actually read the damned Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. We start with Paul O'Neill's transcript of Donald Rumsfeld in the situation room in early 2001:

"Sanctions are fine. But what we really want to think about is going after Saddam. Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that's aligned with U.S. interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond it. It would demonstrate what U.S. policy is all about." Even then Rumsfeld was formulating the justification for war. "It's not my specific objective to get rid of Saddam Hussein," he said, disingenuously. "I'm after the weapons of mass destruction."

Were Bush and Rumsfeld merely reiterating the Clinton administration's previous commitment to "regime change" in Iraq, as they now claim? Or were they abandoning the Clinton approach for a more muscular policy, as they and their ideologues have often boasted? They'd like to have it both ways. But the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, usually cited as precedent, provides no justification for an American invasion and occupation. Its final section states:

"Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of United States Armed Forces (except as provided in section 4(a)(2)) in carrying out this Act." Section 4(a)(2) restricts military action to training and arming indigenous opponents of Saddam, at a cost not to exceed $97 million -- or a bit more than one-tenth of 1 percent of the last supplemental appropriation for the war.

O'Neill also reveals why the administration decided to invade Iraq after 9/11, despite the continuing dearth of any proof that Saddam possessed or produced weapons of mass destruction. At a Camp David meeting following the terrorist attacks, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz warned that while Afghanistan could turn into a mess, the Iraqi regime was ripe for an easy overthrow.

Iraq might not have been much of a threat, but Iraq was certainly "doable."