In my opinion, it is important to base our arguments on factual statements. If we are in a position where opinion and argument is our job, then we have a responsibility to know what we are talking about.

This morning on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, columnist Mona Charen made the claim, then reiterated it when challenged, that Saddam Hussein had "kick out" weapons inspectors.

What? What? Listen: Mona is PAID to put out her opinions. We read columnists with the belief that they will at the very least use facts to back up their opinions. I'm sitting here getting paid nothing and in thirty seconds, I could prove that she is factually wrong on this point. This is a basic point of the history of the Iraq War: The United States requested that the United Nations withdraw weapons inspectors in the final days before the war began. Don't believe me?  Here it is salvaged from the Memory Hole:

<<<Monday, March 17, 2003 Posted: 1:05 PM EST (1805 GMT)

UNITED NATIONS (CNN)

-- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the Security Council on Monday that he is withdrawing weapons inspectors and humanitarian workers from Iraq.

The inspectors are making plans to begin leaving on Tuesday ahead of an expected U.S.-led attack, a U.N. spokesman said…

The United States advised the United Nations to remove its weapons inspectors and offered to help ensure their safe passage...>>>

Okay, okay. So technically the United States DID tell the UN to pull out the inspectors. But it was because Saddam wasn't cooperating. Right?

Again, wrong.  In fact, just 10 days before Hans Blix had described Iraqi cooperation as "proactive."  Don't believe me? Let's reach back into the Memory Hole (Google is useful for that):

<<<Sarah Left
Friday March 7, 2003
Guardian Unlimited

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,909793,00.html

Despite a report from the chief UN weapons inspector describing Iraqi cooperation as "active or even proactive", America and Britain today pushed for a resolution giving Iraq a maximum of 10 days to comply fully with UN demands to disarm.
>>>

Does the truth matter? Should we support columnists who are either irresponsible in not knowing what they are talking about or are rewriting history to present a false past to the American public? I think truth does matter and that columnists who can't stick to facts should lose their jobs.

Wouldn't be great if we could just go back in time to late 2002, early 2003 and do it all over again?

Maybe we'd do it right this time.

But what would the right way to do it be?  Was the mistake when President Bush adopted Rumsfeld's strategy to push with all haste to Baghdad, leaving few troops to guard the rear?

The problem was that this war was sold as being one that wouldn't require much sacrifice. The experience of the first Gulf War led us to believe that few troops would die. At the same time, we were fighting the real war on terror in Afghanistan and refocusing even more troops on Iraq would have taken even more from that effort.

Or was the mistake when "Jerry" Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army, depriving our occupation forces with a lethal force with the experience and will to put down Shia uprisings?

Clearly, the notion that we could just put the old guard back into power minus Saddam would be unpalatable to the American public who believed that we would "free Iraq." As the search for WMDs became more futile, it became even more politically unacceptable to not at the very least attempt to bring about substantive politcal change to Iraq.

No. These weren't mistakes in the context in which they were made. They were correct decisions given the paradigm of thought that prevailed in American society, promulgated by the administration and a host of pundits. America would be welcomed as liberators, not despised as occupiers.

The problem was the paradigm. We've got to rewind all the way to where that paradigm was first dreamed up. Back to the end of the Gulf War when Bush the First had the wisdom to call off the troops short of occupying Baghdad and being put in charge of rebuilding Iraq.  That action dismayed a host of neoconservatives who made it their goal to right that wrong, to someday finish the job. It was this group, the PNAC, that came up with the fantasy that the US could depose Saddam Hussein and simply impose its own hand-picked successor on a divided Iraqi society.

That fantasy came to rule the not-too-discerning mind of our addled leader-in-chief.  The fantasy was too heady for this president to resist. Any clear-headed analysis would see that deposing Saddam and establishing democracy in country that was majority Shia and inclined toward Iran would be a strategically wrongheaded move. Anybody knowing even the basics of Iraqi demographics would know that replacing Saddam would lead to a rupture of society: Shia vs. Sunni, Sunni vs. Kurd, etc., etc.

No the rewind has to go back to Bush. Bush was decieved into believing that this war was a wise war. The unfortunate truth is that our leader was not wise enough to smell a bad deal when it was put in front of him.

Now we're in the quicksand of Iraq with no clear way of getting out.