The Art of Misdirection The essence of a good magic trick is diversion. Your eyes follow the extravagant motions of the illusionist's right hand, while his left palms the coin. When he does his job right, you never even think about the other hand.
This is just what Glenn Reynolds is doing with his "Clinton had contingency plans to invade Iraq too" argument. He produces this with a flourish and the simple-minded stand gape-jawed and applaud. Liberals are supposed to scurry into the bushes and lick their wounds.
Several readers note that Bill Clinton in fact signed into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998." As Clinton said when he signed it:
The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.
Fortunately, this Clinton Administration policy is finally bearing fruit! And what's interesting is that the Clinton signing statement linked above places freedom and democracy for Iraq, coupled with an end to Saddam's crimes against humanity, at the top of the priority list
What Clinton did was publicly support using force to remove Saddam because he was a brutal dictator. What Bush did was appeal to nonexistent evidence of WMDs to support a war that would not have majority support otherwise. Only a fool would see these two scenarios as similar. Only a propagandist would try to sell them as such.
That the Clinton administration had plans drawn up to invade Iraq isn't the point, and it has nothing to do with the Paul O'Neill revelations. The issue is entirely about Bush administration duplicity and nothing else.
When the administration began to openly talk of war, it was always about WMD, and it was about an imminent threat and (occasionally) a connection to al-Qaida. It was the aluminum tubes, it was the mobile weapons labs, it was a mushroom cloud over Manhattan. It was never about following through on the policies of a previous administration, it was because, as Dick Cheney unambiguously stated, everything changed after 9/11.
That was how the war was sold to the American people, those were the justifications used to win support. And those were all lies.
The Bush administration told us, over and over, in no uncertain terms, that their recognition of the threat from Saddam had come from the realities of the new War on Terror. Never once did they claim that the policies they were advocating grew organically from those of the Clinton administration, never once did they say that they were now committing to a plan that had been in the works since early 2001.
The reason for the need to distract the American people is clear. O'Neill's revelations alone would not rock Bush's credibility, but coupled with the ongoing failure to find even hints of extant WMD weapons, with an clearly inadequate post-war plan, and with a steadily increasing price tag, the evidence is mounting for a massive administration fuck up. O'Neill's claims are evidence that they pushed for a war they couldn't pay for, and ended up with an uneasy peace they never planned for. O'Neill has just raised the odd that the word "incompetent" will become linked with the phrase "Bush administration" in the public's mind.
That is why the accusations have to be trivialized. With a close race (this weekend a strategist for Bush-Cheney 2004 appearing on Tim Russert's CNBC program predicted a close election, with a 4-5% spread between the two candidates), splitting off even a small number of Bush voters could be the key to victory for the Democrats. Republicans are desperate to prevent a "Bush is a lying warmonger" meme from taking root anywhere.
6:53:36 PM 
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