IF WE'RE WRONG ON IRAQ

Much has been said of the fact that the U.S. is "going it alone" in Iraq, seeing as only 30 other countries have supported us openly while 15 others have done so behind the scenes. What I'm hearing from all sides is that we're sticking our necks out by acting without that umpteenth U.N. resolution, so dammit, we'd better be right.

To that, I reply: right about what? About Saddam Hussein having substantial quantities of undeclared WMD? If we're wrong about that, then so is the rest of the U.N. Security Council. If France didn't think Saddam had WMD, it should have voted against Security Council Resolution 1441. So if we're wrong on that count, everybody's wrong, and at least we're in good company. 

The one scenario I can envision in which we would indeed be wrong, and France and Germany right, would be if Saddam was indeed in material breach but Hans Blix's crew was doing a much better job of thoroughly disarming him than anyone (even Blix himself) thought it was. Even if this happened, I wonder how bad our P.R. would be when new stories come out almost daily about torture chambers, or worse. But if, for some reason, it turns out that Hussein was really in the process of completely disarming, and all the horror stories about human rights atrocities turned out to be one great big disinformation campaign (a claim hardly anyone other than the Iraqi regime itself has made), then I promise to eat escargots and chant "France was right, we were wrong" once a day, every day from then until the end of the year. And no, I won't take down this post, even if it ends up making me look like an idiot. I know what happens to people who try to cover their tracks in the blogosphere.

UPDATE: MSNBC reports that 65% of the population supports a war on Iraq. I wonder how this story fits in with all the propaganda journalism we've read in recent months that claims most Americans conditioned their support for the war on new U.N. authorization? Perhaps this means that 16% of the population thinks the Security Council just voted to authorize force yesterday morning, but didn't bother to tell anyone about it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The International Herald Tribune reports that increasing numbers of French and Germans are beginning to wonder if their governments overplayed their hands. I don't think there's too much "wondering" on this side of the pond.