For the Record

“The most powerful case for the war was made at the 2004 Republican convention by John McCain in a speech that was resolutely ‘realist.’ On the Democratic side, every presidential candidate running today who was in the Senate when the motion to authorize the use of force came up—Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd—voted yes. Outside of government, the case for war was made not just by the neoconservative Weekly Standard but—to select almost randomly—the traditionally conservative National Review, the liberal New Republic and the center-right Economist. Of course, most neoconservatives supported the war, the case for which was also being made by journalists and scholars from every point on the political spectrum...

[Perhaps] the most influential tome on behalf of war was written not by any conservative, let alone neoconservative, but by Kenneth Pollack, Clinton’s top Near East official on the National Security Council. The title: ‘The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.’

Everyone has the right to renounce past views. But not to make up that past. It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing not ancient history but what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago. And yet sometimes brazenness works.”

—Charles Krauthammer