Before we move on to people whose opinions we might actually care about, let's dispense first with some people who ought never be allowed again on a tour bus in the District Of Columbia, let alone in the actual hallways of power. For example, here's serial liar Oliver North, who once sold American missiles to Iran, trying to keep the old WMD fable in the air.

"We got rid of a brutal despot who used chemical and biological weapons against his own people. Weapons of mass destruction that he probably exported to Sudan before we got there."

Remember when Saddam was supposed to have sent all his WMD's to Syria? How did the Sudan get in there? Did I miss a memo from Roger Ailes? And, again, as I wondered when the story was that they went to Syria, why exactly would Saddam Hussein prepare for an imminent invasion of his country by getting rid of the most powerful weapons he had? What good would Colin Powell's truckloads of poison do him in the Sudan?

While we think about that, let's listen to John Yoo, hypothetical crusher of children's testicles, who would like to meet us all on the playground at recess, thanks.

Courts award damages based on the harm to the victim and the harm to society. Suppose you thought that the Iraq war was a mistake. If so, isn't the proper remedy to restore Saddam Hussein's family and the Baath Party to power in Iraq? If you are unwilling to consider that remedy, aren't you conceding that on balance, the benefits of the war outweigh the costs?

Liberal hawks? All you folks out there who are so sorry today? These are the people with whom you signed up. This is the cause you served. And, with all due respect to Jonathan Chait, who's done really terrific work at New York, the anniversary of this mendacious fiasco would be better celebrated by paying more attention to the people who were right, rather than by all the apologias, the alibis-by-explanations, and the we'll-get-it-right-next-time maunderings from the easy marks who enabled the blood-soaked grifters.

Here's a prime example, though not the only one, from Charles H. Pierce. Where the hawks threw the suffering of Iraqi children in the face of the doves, Pierce throws that same suffering back in the face of the hawks ("You gambled with other people's children in a game you'd helped rig"). He objects to the very fact that figures like David Frum are even publishing articles at all, winding up to this righteous conclusion: Shut up, all of you. Go away. You are complicit in one way or another in a giant crime containing many great crimes. Atone in secret." Well. Nothing says "let's have a more open and rational debate" quite like "shut up and go away."

First of all, watch your back. My grandfather Patrick, the Irish beat cop from whom I derived my middle name, and the initial thereof, may be coming back from the dead to visit you, Police Special in hand. Second, I don't want an open and rational debate with these lycanthropes. They relied on journalistic convention and the soft agreements between gentlemen to peddle their poison. I want them dismissed from this anniversary because it's like bringing out the Manson family to discuss the film oeuvre of Sharon Tate. I want to see op-eds from Hans Blix, and from ElBaradei. I want to see long retrospectives, not from the liberal laptop warriors assembled by The New Republic, but from Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay. (A note: I generally credit "the McClatchy guys" for getting it right. I got that wrong. McClatchy bought out Knight-Ridder after Strobel and Landay did all their best work. They did that work under the aegis of Knight-Ridder and that should be properly recognized.) For all the fan-dancing that's being done by people in order to rehabilitate themselves, it is still the most important thing to remember that there were people who got...it...right. Luckily, over at his place, Bill Moyers put up the full-length television special he did a few years back on this very subject. Consider that my open and rational response to the disgusting spectacle playing itself out elsewhere.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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