Bret Devereaux

I am sympathetic to this view (read the whole thread) that the Iraq War was over determined. But I am also conscious that this sympathy may be because that view would pardon some of the foolish things my much younger self believed and mercifully never put into print.https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1330139287527055361 …

If I'm reading that thread right, he's basically saying that both Democrats would have pursued the war too if they'd won 2000. Which sure, maybe, but ... then he says that's why it was a good idea. And I don't follow that logic. Two sides can both have the same stupid idea.

Not that it was a good idea. That it was inevitable. Inevitable and probably bad (but made much worse by the botched occupation policy). At least, that's my reading.

https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1330139267880939522?s=19 … Well part of his cited reasoning for why Saddam Hussein was an overdetermined problem which *needed* to be dealt with by war is WMDs, so I'm not even inclined to trust him when he says it *was* overdetermined.

When justifying a war requires systemic suborning of intelligence agency findings and lying, I'm skeptical that the war was actually inevitable. Even if I *might* be convinced that Al Gore would have pushed it too, that doesn't mean there was no other choice.

I took him to be referring to Saddam Hussein's very well documented use of chemical weapons against both Iran and the Kurds.

If so, he has *got* to use another term. If you say "Saddam Hussein had WMDs", that justification has a very specific cultural context and you do not get to complain when people think you're regurgitating discredited lies.