The invaluable Jeffrey Goldberg presents what is to my mind an unarguable case for removing Saddam from power in Slate. But his real discovery is a New York Times editorial of June 9, 1981. It concerned the Israelis’ pre-emptive strike against Saddam’s Osirak nuclear plant. Under the headline, “Israel’s Illusion,” the Times declared:
Israel’s sneak attack on a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression. Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago.
There you have it: the moral equivalence, the short-sightedness, the moral preening, all disguising a fantastic error of judgment. If Saddam had had that nuclear capacity, there would have been no Gulf War, or one with disastrous consequences. The Times, of course, never learns. But this time, the security of the United States is at stake. We cannot let ourselves be led by the deluded and the defeatist any more.
The Dish 