Oh, my. Some people do sound a tad shrill.

Looks like Steve Clemons’s interview with Brent Scowcroft in the October 31 issue of the New Yorker (article not online, but the issue goes on sale tomorrow) is going to be a must-read. You can find excerpts at the links above. I want to mention this paragraph in particular:

Like nearly everyone else in Washington, Scowcroft believed that Saddam maintained stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, but he wrote that a strong inspections program would have kept him at bay. “There may have come a time when we would have needed to take Saddam out,” he told me. “But he wasn’t really a threat. His Army was weak, and the country hadn’t recovered from sanctions.” Scowcroft’s colleagues told me that he would have preferred to deliver his analysis privately to the White House. But Scowcroft, the apotheosis of a Washington insider, was by then definitively on the outside, and there was no one in the White House who would listen to him. On the face of it, this is remarkable: Scowcroft’s best friend’s son is the President; his friend Dick Cheney is the Vice-President; Condoleezza Rice, who was the national-security adviser, and is now the Secretary of State, was once a Scowcroft protege; and the current national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, is another protege and a former principal at the Scowcroft Group.

Now, this is exactly what I thought about Saddam Hussein before the invasion. Many’s the time before the invasion I had this exchange with a rightie:

Rightie: You looney lefties would just leave Saddam in charge of Iraq.

Me: Well, yes. I think he’s contained. And what’s he gonna do with UN weapons inspectors running all over the place, poking into things?

Rightie: You leftie idiots don’t know anything. You are so naive.

Yes, I may be naive. I have no experience directing foreign policy or national security. But, I might add, I’ve never argued with a rightie with any more experience than I have. Yet they always assume they know more than I do.

But Scowcroft has experience, and he says I was right.

Speaking of Saddam, in today’s Washington Post Jim Hoagland writes that Saddam’s lawyers may present testimony that might cause the Bushies some discomfort.

Saddam Hussein’s lawyers have announced their intention to make past U.S. complicity with the Iraqi dictator an essential part of the defense in his Baghdad trial. Let’s hope they keep their poisonous word. …

“Americans . . . want to blame Saddam for the mass graves and killing Kurds,” Khalil Dulaimi, the dictator’s lead lawyer, told the Wall Street Journal. “But they forget that they supported Saddam back then.”…

… Official Washington helped Hussein suppress Iraqis so he could fight Iran (Reagan), called on the people to rise up against the dictator only to abandon them when they did (Bush 41) or relied on economic sanctions that slowly ground Iraqi society into dust while providing a political alibi at home for not acting (Clinton). The unnecessary misery, political strife and corruption that a misbegotten and mismanaged occupation now contributes to Iraq must also be added to the list.

Hoagland argues that Americans owe Iraq “more than a sudden case of moral amnesia to bolster precipitous withdrawal.” I agree with Hoagland in principle. But it’s hard to see how not-withdrawing is helping Iraq, either.

Before I forget–we are about to reach the 2000 mark–2,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. We may have reached it already, but as I keyboard the most recent information says we’re at 1,996, ten of which have not yet been confirmed by the Department of Defense. United for Peace and Justice and other organizations are calling for an antiwar action the day after the U.S. announces the 2,000th death. You can follow the link to see if anything is being organized near you.