In the article Feith states about the Iraq War: "The main rationale [for the war] was not bassed on intelligence . . . It was known to anyone who read newspapers and knew history. Saddam had used nerve gas, he had invaded his neighbors more than once, he had attacked other neighbors, he was hostile to us [the United States?], he supported numerous terrorist groups. It's true that he didn't have a link that we know of to 9/11 . . . . But he did give safe haven to terrorists. . . . Given the ease, as everybody knows, with which one can reconstitute stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons if you have the capabilities which he had, I don'think the rationale for war hinged on the existence of stockpiles."

Here again is basically an admission that policy, not intelligence, drove the the Bush decision to invade Iraq. Intelligence was then shaped around the obvious "facts" and "history" to provide a public relations rationale for the war. This is exactly the same perspective as given by the British memo released last weekend.

I think what is most disturbing to me is that both the author of the article and Feith can only think in terms of the impact of the war on the United States. The decimation of Iraq and the Iraqi people does not even appear on the moral horizon. We mustn't forget that the decimation of the Iraqi people continues. This is not the "Culture of Life" that John Paul II talked about, but rather, the "Culture of Death."