A War of Choice or of Necessity? (washingtonpost.com)
According to Richard Haass, director of policy planning at the State Department until June 2003 and still the Bush administration’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, the administration “did not have to go to war against Iraq, certainly not when we did. There were other options.” Really?
This is not what the administration told us before the war and continues to tell us to this day. On March 20, as he was sending troops into Iraq because the regime of Saddam Hussein allegedly possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al Qaeda, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told them, “We are at the point at which the risk of not acting is too great to wait longer. As you prepare, know that this war is necessary . . .”