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In Defense of Karl Rove
Kevin D. Williamson had a piece in National Review Online this weekend on the man both sides love to hate.
For the Left, Rove served for many years as the go-to bogeyman, the marquee name with which to conjure before Democrats discovered Charles and David Koch. “Karl Rove” was how the Left pronounced “Satan.”
What has been peculiar in the years since then is Rove’s transformation from left-wing hate totem to right-wing hate totem, an all-purpose villain whose name is used liberally by tea-party groups and conservative populists raising funds for races in which he has no involvement.
Read and discuss.
Williamson — and his frequent collaborator, Charlie Cooke — is among the best of the younger NR contributors and would be welcome on Ricochet any time.
Image Credit: “Karl Rove” by White House – http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/results/leadership/bio_383.html (direct link). Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Published in General
Cochran made the silly assumption that everything was going to stay the same, forever. Others have already noted that the sanctions regime was collapsing for a variety of reasons, and once the sanctions were lifted there would have been nothing stopping Hussein from resuming all his old schemes.
I’ll also note that if Iraq had 550 tons of yellowcake uranium ore I never heard about it, which ties into the Rove story about quashing evidence of Iraqi WMDs. But just why did Iraq retain it, if there were no plans to resurrect a nuclear program later? After all, it’s useless, right?
In any case politically Bush had no choice but to remove the Hussein regime, one way or another.
If he hadn’t, in 2004 we’d have seen the democrat shrieking that Bush betrayed the country because he failed to save us from Saddam. Then, once elected, that democrat would have gotten us the same sort of worthless agreement Clinton got us with North Korea.
Not good.