Bush as intelligence victim doesn't mesh with the facts

WASHINGTON — When President Bush is asked whether he regrets attacking Iraq on what now turns out to be bad information, he always answers to the effect that the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power.

Which is no answer at all. I can think of many world leaders (and even a few members of the Bush administration) whose absence from power would leave the world better off. But that does not justify turning thought into violent action.

The president wants us to forget this awkward truth: The justification he offered for attacking Iraq was not that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy but (1) that he was contemptuously in violation of U.N. resolutions and (2) that he and his weapons of mass destruction were an urgent danger to the United States — so ominous, in fact, that if we waited for more inspections and negotiations, it might be too late.

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