Um, yeah... No. We were told preemption was needed because of an imminent threat, not a looming threat. We were told that there were tons of weapons ready to go in 45 minutes, not explorations into future capabilities. Preemption was supposedly justified because there was no longer any time remaining before we were going to be totally fucked.

Again, all the backpedaling would be funny if it weren't so goddamn infuriating.

Preemption's only hope for justification was that Saddam had already done bad things, i.e. developed and harbored illegal weapons. It turned out that he had no such weapons. Oh, but preemption can be justified based on what we think he might want to do. Ignoring that we were already wrong once in guessing what Saddam was thinking and up to, this is still dangerous thinking. It turns into this ugly game of guilty until proven innocent. I keep hearing all this bullshit talk about America's credibility, but how can we have any if we don't accord people around the world the same treatment as we would give ourselves in our own justice system?

I know, Saddam was a crazy lunatic madman. I know. That's why we found him cowering in a hole, guns decidedly not ablaze. We thought we were so right about everything, and it turns out that we managed to fuck just about everything up.