'Shoulda left Saddam as is...

The heat has been turned up on Bush and those that supported the Iraq war in recent days.

In response, Billmon of the Whiskey Bar writes, "the war hawks have settled on a response to the WMD snipe hunt fiasco and the broken promise of democracy fiasco. This is to respond to every bit of bad news – and every new sign of the administration's bad faith – by snarling the question: 'Well, would you have left Saddam in power?'

This is the right-wing question de jour because they believe it puts opponents of the war in an impossible position. Say "yes," and it doesn't matter what else you say, the attack machine has you in its cross hairs. Say "no," and the obvious response is "so what you are bitching about?"

...since I'm not running for office and have no journalistic reputation left to protect, I'll answer the hawks' question: Yes, I would have left Saddam in power.

Because at the end of the day, having a brutal but aging dictator sitting in a box in Baghdad would have been far safer for U.S. national security – and the health and welfare of the Iraqi people – than the bloody chaos we have unleashed.

Because booting Saddam back into the criminal underground resurrected not one of his previous victims, and added another 4,000 names or so to the list of casualties – and that doesn't include the thousands or hundreds of thousands more who will die in the insanity to come...

A related piece from Mother Jones documents the intellectual backflips being done by those staunch supporters of Bush and the war.