Justifying war shouldn't hinge on a slip of the tongue

The nation deserves a better explanation of how the president came to use bogus information in his State of the Union address regarding alleged attempts by Iraq to buy uranium for possible use in building nuclear weapons. More than that, the administration must defend its rational for invading Iraq, which was that Saddam Hussein and his regime presented an imminent danger to the United States.
It's going to take more to settle the question than White House press secretary Ari Fleischer dismissing questions about the importance of the nuclear weapons story as a "bunch of bull" at the last press conference of his career.
Shift to irrelevance
It appears that President Bush and his administration would like to treat all the questions that are being raised about the nuclear weapons issue, weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's alleged ties to Al-Qaida as irrelevant in the aftermath of the war.
They are not.
It should be remembered that the administration persuaded the American people and Congress on the need to send 200,000 American troops to war because Iraq posed a threat to the United States. At a time when most of the rest of the world argued that United Nations weapons inspectors should be allowed to continue their work in Iraq, the administration belittled the U.N. effort.
Two months after Saddam was toppled, it is beginning to appear as if the 12-year effort to disarm Saddam following the first Persian Gulf War may have been more successful than anyone in the administration was -- or is -- willing to acknowledge.
It should be remembered that the issue of weapons of mass destruction was not treated by the administration as hypothetical during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a detailed account to the United Nations of U.S. intelligence regarding Saddam's WMDs. And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated directly that we knew Saddam had such weapons and we knew where they were.
The administration has already attempted to brush off the African nuclear material story as the fault of the CIA. But Vice President Dick Cheney took a personal interest in having the African uranium question tracked down. Before the war, the vice president said the United States knew that Saddam "is absolutely devoted to nuclear weapons." To suggest that he did not follow up on former ambassador Joseph Wilson's February 2002 trip to Niger to check on the uranium claim is not credible. Wilson returned convinced that the uranium story was untrue.
What the vice president knew and when he knew it is an important issue, because he sat directly behind the president during the State of the Union address. If President Bush mischaracterized the situation, even inadvertently, it was incumbent on the vice president to tell the president what he knew immediately. It should not have taken five or six months for the truth to leak out. It should not fall to CIA Director George Tenet to take responsibility for the error.
Toppling a tyrant
There are those inside and outside the administration who would say the weapons issue no longer matters, that the important thing is that Saddam Hussein, a murderous tyrant, is out of power.
But the administration did not argue for an invasion of Iraq based on the evilness of Saddam. There are dozens of tyrants in the world subjugating hundreds of millions of people.
It was argued that the United States had to take the extraordinary action of a pre-eminent attack based on the real threat posed by Saddam Hussein to the peace and security of the United States. Congress should investigate the extent to which that threat existed and the extent to which that threat may have been exaggerated during the debate leading up to the invasion.