Reply #75: Well, yes, in the world where policy minutiae are argued incessantly.

[Brotherjohn]

You say: "Accepting the PNAC'ers usage of the term Preemptive to include what they did in Iraq leaves it VERY difficult to critique their ultimate Foreign Policy Goal."

Not really, because semantics aside, they didn't attack to counter an imminent threat. In the real world, all one has to say is "No WMDs? No stockpiles? No drones capable of reaching the U.S.? No Al Qaeda connection? Then why the F*** did we invade!?" That is what a lot of voters are asking now, and why Bush's numbers have been plummeting for months.

They don't care about the specifics of whether or not a particular word was used or not. They only care that they were told there was a threat and we needed to do this, and now it appears that there was not the case. In fact, if the Bush administration tries to argue semantics to get out of such a serious issue, it will be political suicide.

This is the real world, it isn't a legal case where the Bush administration will have to argue whether the war was justified based on some technicality. In any case, even if it was, they would lose, because if they say it was really okay because it was "pre-emptive" in that there was an imminent threat, then how does that jibe with the facts and their own admission it was NOT an imminent threat (it was "a grave, gathering danger", remember?)?

If they go with "pre-emption" as you define it, they are sunk because that is not, in fact, what they have done in Iraq. If they continue to go with "pre-emption" as countering "gathering threats", then they are sunk, because that makes it an illegal and immoral policy, one that all Democratic candidates should rightfully attack.