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Iraq, three years on: Mea culpa, anyone?
Looking back on the rationale (or lackthereof) that led to war
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by Scott Piatkowski
March 23 — 29 2006 |
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As the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq War passes (heck,
we’re already approaching the third anniversary of when it was
supposed TO END), I thought it might be instructive to revisit
some of the more interesting things that were said back in the
first half of 2003.
I was fortunate to find in my Inbox an email from Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which provided a series of
bold––and wrong––predictions made by a number of American
pundits (the full list is much longer than the samples I’ve
provided). The other quotes––the Canadian ones––listed below are
some that I’ve been saving for just such an occasion.
Without further ado, here are my nominees for the 2006 Mea
Culpa Awards. Feel free to pick your own “winner”:
“I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San
Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you
willing to take that wager?” –Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, January 29,
2003
“Mr. Chairman, I fear the former leader of the official
opposition [Stockwell Day, who had just spoken] may have had a
peek at my speech.... Should the United Nations fail to accept its
responsibility and enforce its resolutions, I believe that this
country working with our traditional allies, the United States,
Great Britain, Australia and others, should, indeed must, keep its
options open in terms of participating in a coalition of
like–minded countries to disarm the regime.”–Former Liberal MP
David Pratt (Paul Martin’s first choice for Defence Minister),
Defence Committee, January 29, 2003
“It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military
machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no
question that it will… There's no way. There's absolutely no way.
They may bomb for a matter of weeks; try to soften them up as
they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain
unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that.” –Bill
O'Reilly, Fox News, February 10, 2003
“It is inherently dangerous to allow a country such as Iraq to
retain weapons of mass destruction, particularly in light of its
past aggressive behaviour. If the world community fails to disarm
Iraq, we fear that other rogue states will be encouraged to believe
that they too can have these most deadly of weapons to
systematically defy international resolutions and that the world
will do nothing to stop them.” –Stephen Harper, House of
Commons, March 20, 2003
“I still think the President is right when he says that Iraq and
the world will be better off with Saddam disarmed, even, if
necessary, through force.”
–Liberal MP (and leadership candidate?) Michael Ignatieff, New
York Times, March 31, 2003
“Mr. Speaker, the issue of war requires moral leadership. We
believe the government should stand by our troops, our friends
and our allies and do everything necessary to support them right
through to victory.” –Stephen Harper, House of Commons, April 1,
2003
“Thank you for saying to our friends in the United States of
America: ‘You are our ally, our neighbour, and our best friend in
the whole wide world. And, when your brave men and women give
their lives for freedom and democracy we are not neutral. We do
not stand on the sidelines; we're for the disarmament of Saddam
and the liberation of the people of Iraq.’” –Stephen Harper,
Friends of America Rally, April 4, 2003
“What's he [referring to Democrat Howard Dean] going to
talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well
and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their––Isn't
there a fresh date on some of these debate points?” –Chris
Matthews, MSNBC, April 9, 2003
“Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical
weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was
attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think,
really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for
three or four more years.” –Dick Morris, Fox News, April 9, 2003
“The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting
together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all
their equipment and winning. And, it gets easier. I mean, setting
up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war.”
–Fred Barnes, Fox News, April 10, 2003
“Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in
Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?”
–Alan Colmes, Fox News, April 25, 2003
“It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in
the broadest context... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear
that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who
can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose––cannot oppose him
politically.” –Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum, speaking on
Fox News, May 2, 2003
“It is ideological claptrap to suppose that the Bush
administration made up the risk. Saddam has been a security
threat in the Gulf for 20 years. His desire to acquire these
weapons was unquestionable; there isn't a serious analyst who
doesn't think he'd wanted to have them.” –Liberal MP Michael
Ignatieff, Maclean's, June 23, 2003
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