George W. Bush writes his in memoir that “removing [former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein] from power was the right decision... For all the difficulties that followed, America is safer without a homicidal dictator pursuing [weapons of mass destruction] and supporting terror at the heart of the Middle East."
In an interview this week with the Times of London, Mr. Bush said: "I was surprised when he didn't have [WMD]. That's the key point. Everybody thought he had them."
Nevertheless, one of Bush's main reasons for going to war – that Iraq was a "gathering danger" and held large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons – turned out to be moot.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has also defended his decision to go to war by arguing that Saddam Hussein posed a significant risk, even if he did not hold weapons of mass destruction. But former Bush aide Karl Rove, in his recent book "Courage and Consequences," argues that Bush sincerely believed that Hussein had WMD and would not have gone to war otherwise.
Stanley Kober, a research fellow in foreign-policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, takes issue with that explanation in an op-ed for the Monitor.
"Since when has honesty been an excuse for starting a war under erroneous assumptions? In what other profession would such an argument be made and taken seriously?"
