Adding to its long, ever-changing list of reasons for war, the Bush administration is now saying Saddam Hussein must disarm and relinquish power to avert hostilities.
By adding a requirement that is unrelated to our self-defense and has no foundation in international law, the administration has moved away from the solid logic of enforcing United Nations resolutions and unnecessarily embraced true unilateralism. This move will further damage the credibility of the United States and give its detractors one more reason to believe it was bent on war all along.
As spun by rc3.org:
“Unfortunately, this confirms that the talk of disarming Iraq this whole time was just a sad charade, and so was all the talk of terrorist ties. The Bush administration was hoping that it could unearth some pretense for war that the world would buy, but now that it’s obvious that just isn’t going to work, the ruse has been abandoned. Might makes right. Saddam must go. Hail Caesar.”
Now, it seems, war depends on this more than anything else.