The Key Issue

I’ve been saying for a while that the debunking of the “nuclear smoking gun” is perhaps the critical issue in the campaign to oust a morally corrupt administration. Many conservatives are going to have to come to grips with ousting one of their own, in favour of Kerry, simply because it is the right thing to do.

Like the tax cuts, Mr. Bush’s obsession with Saddam Hussein seemed closer to zealotry than mere policy. He sold the war to the American people, and to Congress, as an antiterrorist campaign even though Iraq had no known working relationship with Al Qaeda. His most frightening allegation was that Saddam Hussein was close to getting nuclear weapons. It was based on two pieces of evidence. One was a story about attempts to purchase critical materials from Niger, and it was the product of rumor and forgery. The other evidence, the purchase of aluminum tubes that the administration said were meant for a nuclear centrifuge, was concocted by one low-level analyst and had been thoroughly debunked by administration investigators and international vetting. Top members of the administration knew this, but the selling went on anyway. None of the president’s chief advisers have ever been held accountable for their misrepresentations to the American people or for their mismanagement of the war that followed.— New York Times Editorial Board

Clearly its not just us plain thinking conservatives, liberals, and others around the political spectrum which have zeroed in on this key issue.