1 Boring Old Man

^{Niccolo Machiavelli never actually said "the ends justify the means". The Italian words that are often mistranslated as such, "si guarda al fine", can be found in The Prince, Chapter XVIII: Concerning the way in Which Princes Should Keep Faith. The phrase is better translated as "one must think of the final result", and was written in regards to the lack of a true judge of whether a prince’s words convey mercy, faithfulness, integrity, kindness, and piety. Italian has already been mentioned, so let’s go further back in time to Latin. The Latin phrase "exitus acta probat" translates into English as "the outcome justifies the deed." Needless to say, such a concept existed well before the time of Machiavelli…}_[link]

^{— When no WMD’s were found in Iraq, Amhad Chalabi, head of the Iraq National Congress, a major source of the damning prewar intelligence on Iraq said, "We are heroes in error….As far as we’re concerned, we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."}
^{— Said George W. Bush in response to the absence of WMD’s in Iraq, "You’ve got to understand. Saddam Hussein was a bad man."}
^{— and Cheney [over and over], "… there has not been another attack on the United States. And that’s not an accident, because we’ve done a hell of a job here at home in terms of homeland security."}
^{— Tony Blair last week, "But on the terrible civilian death toll in Iraq of an estimated 100,000 people, he insisted: ‘It wasn’t the coalition forces who were doing the killing. It was the terrorists. But the Iraqi people today are better off than they were in 2003.’"}

^{RT HON TONY BLAIR: Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons, who were going to follow him, in charge of Iraq, people who used chemical weapons, caused the death of over 1 million people, what we now know is that he retained absolutely the intent and the intellectual know how to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons programme when the inspectors were out and the sanctions changed, which they were going to be. I think it is at least arguable that he was a threat and that, had we taken that decision to leave him there with the intent, with an oil price, not of $25, but of $100 a barrel, he would have had the intent, he would have had the financial means and we would have lost our nerve.}
^{RT HON TONY BLAIR: … By then, we had been four months with Saddam and, you know, you can take different views and of the Blix reports, and Hans Blix obviously takes a certain view now. I have to say in my conversations with him then it was a little different. But you have to make a judgment: is this person really seriously cooperating with the international community or not? As we now know, incidentally, he wasn’t. I do emphasise also the fact that he and there is also evidence in the Iraq Survey Group, which is actually quite important, about what Iraqi scientists were being told by the Vice President of Iraq. He gathered them all together as the inspectors went in and, as you know, the inspectors were supposed to be given all the information, any materials they had. What he was saying was, "If you have any materials in your possession, you had better not have". Now …}

In the case that’s on the table, all of these arguments reduce to something that neither Bush, nor Cheney, nor Blair will own up to. The UN Security Council passed UNSCR 1441. They were fed up with Saddam Hussein too. Then Colin Powell showed up and made his presentation. They were as unconvinced as I was. They saw in that pitiful presentation that we had no documented, credible evidence that suggested that the level of danger required invasion because it didn’t. All of the whining that the UN didn’t act is inoperative because the overwhelming evidence is that the UN Security Council was absolutely correct, it did not seem that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That’s what the UN is there for, and it did the right thing. I guess they thought we had ulterior motives [me too].