Tristes Verdades

In recent days, George W. Bush has accused those asking awkward questions about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction of rewriting history. "We made it clear to the dictator of Iraq that he must disarm," Mr Bush said last week. "He chose not to do so, so we disarmed him. And I know there's a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain. He is no longer a threat to the free world and the people of Iraq are free."
But if anyone is revising history, it is the US president. Iraq's WMD programme was the test case for Mr Bush's doctrine of pre-emption. The Iraqi threat was "grave and growing", Mr Bush declared. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," he warned on the eve of war.
"We know where they are," said Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as US and British forces advanced into Iraq. But 90 days after the main fighting ended, US forces have yet to find a single chemical artillery shell, litre of anthrax or uranium enrichment facility. Lieutenant-General James Conway, the senior US marine in the Iraq region, has explained the failure to find any weapons by concluding that "we were simply wrong".
Yet rather than asking why US intelligence was wrong, Mr Bush now claims that the war was about freeing the Iraqi people. No doubt Iraqis are better off without Mr Hussein. But even a staunch supporter of the Iraq war such as Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, has agreed that Mr Hussein's misrule "by itself [was] not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk".
Mr Bush's impatience with those who want to know why his forces have not found WMD is shortsighted. In a democracy, it matters whether the people can believe what their leaders tell them. If the facts on the ground do not match what leaders say, the consequences can be profound. The Vietnam war showed how difficult it is to close the credibility gap once it has opened up.

O resto do artigo explora algumas consequências sobre a credibilidade da política externa americana dum possível falhanço em explicar o que aconteceu às armas anunciadas.
Eu continuo à espera. Para aqueles que pensam que a intervenção no Iraque seria justificável independentemente da existência das WMD que a administração Bush anunciou, não se preocupem. Este argumento não foi para vos convencer. Pode ser que, da próxima vez, se use o mesmo método para algo que vos preocupe mais. As possibilidades são imensas.