There’s been a huge amount of bytes expended this week, for once in a worthwhile cause. This Monday’s (4.10.06) Christopher Hitchens’ article in Slate, Wowie Zahawie, lays out plainly the case that Joe Wilson is a lying scum out to smear the President and discredit (as if enough damage hasn’t been done elsewhere) the rationale for the War to Free Iraq.
It is obvious today, as it was in 2003, that there was sufficient evidence that Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake that it would have been reckless for any American president to have assumed that it had not. That domestic critics of George Bush and foreign opponents of the United States continue to insist that there was no “proof” of this is transportingly irrelevant. If we have learned one thing in dealing with Iran and North Korea, there will rarely be proof of illegal activity until the terrorist state in question is too close to a bomb for us to do anything about it (Libya being the delightful exception to that general rule). “Proof” is not, and must not be, the standard. My standard, which naturally I wish the world would adopt, is whether there is sufficient evidence of an atomic bomb program that it would be reckless for the leaders of the West to assume otherwise.
[UPDATE]: Woohoo a Trackback from one of my favorite bloggers, Lorie Byrd of Polipundit!