If we hadn't invaded Iraq, all the bad would just have gone away, the little kites would be flying, the sanctions would just fade into rainbows, and all the deaths would be somewhere else where we wouldn't have to think about them.

Before the war, the Left was howling about the sanctions, and 5,000 dead children a month. Not surprisingly, this vanished into the usual memory holes after the war started, and suddenly we got "sanctions were working."

Before the war, Russia and France, who stood fast in the U.N. against military action against Iraq, were raking in barrels of cash from Saddam. As best as I can tell, nobody is making this part of the discussion on why we went to war without the U.N.

Now the general meme is that Iraq was harmless, had nothing to do with terrorism, and left alone, would always have been that way. Unfortunately, the administration, with few exceptions, isn't bothering to debate this.

Stephen Hayes, on ceding the debate.