Hilzoy has an excerpt of Paul Krugman’s latest column and it’s a can’t miss. The crux of the column is that debate reporting is still terrible, pointing to a statement by professional panderer Mitt Romney who made a preposterous statement:
Mr. Romney said that war could only have been avoided if Saddam “had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction.” He dismissed this as an “unreasonable hypothetical.”
Except that Saddam did, in fact, allow inspectors in. Remember Hans Blix? When those inspectors failed to find nonexistent W.M.D., Mr. Bush ordered them out so that he could invade. Mr. Romney’s remark should have been the central story in news reports about Tuesday’s debate. But it wasn’t.
He’s right. A gaffe of that magnitude should be grounds for ridicule and instant disqualification from running for President. It’s basic history and if a candidate can’t understand the basic timeline of the war, they shouldn’t be running. Period.
Krugman’s ultimate point, which Atrios has built an entire blog around, is that the media is still reporting on stupid surface stories rather than actual substantive issues. They should be criticizing both Republicans and Democrats when they make collosal errors like this. Instead, they revel in pointing out the trivial and the theatrical. Demand better.
June 12th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Feelings towards Romney aside (I am definitely not a fan), but i never had any faith in any of the inspectors, mainly because for over a decade they kept saying nothing was there and proven wrong repeatedly. There was something like 14 (or was it 16?) resolutions passed in the UN sanctioning Iraq for violating the various bans on weaponry. Maybe he did stop in the end… but I wasnt about to trust that in end. Fool me once shame on you.. fool me 14 times…
I wish this was all squared away during the first gulf war. So much crap would have been avoided.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
That’s fine to say, but the inspectors were never proven wrong… when were they proven wrong? last I checked, they still haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
There was no way to square this away in the first gulf war given the playing field then and the President in power. President Bush (41, not W) has said repeatedly that he couldn’t hold together the coalition for a long term occupation of Iraq which is what would’ve been necessary if they toppled Saddam. There was no way to do this with sticks that wasn’t explored by both Clinton and Bush 43 since.
By the way, point of fact: The Bush admin accused Iraq of violating 16 UN Resolutions, not all of which had to do with WMD or weapons programs. You can find the full list on the White House’s web site: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect2.html
I feel obligated to point out, by the way, that just because the White House claimed they were in violation doesn’t make it so. There were a number of times where the White House was parsing the meaning of, say, unfettered access to mean exactly what they wanted to. If you read the reports from Hans Blix, who was leading the IAEA inspection teams, you’ll find a different story.
And, I’d point out again, that no U.S. inspection team since the invasion has found any large scale WMD activity or program….