MORAL CLARITY

Blogging at Time, Jay Carney said yesterday,

The inevitable spin out of the Bush Administration will be that the NIE is proof that their approach on Iran has worked.

In fact, the spin of the right in general, or at least part of the spin, is that Bush's approach on Iraq has worked:

Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online:

... Iran, like Libya, likely came to a conjecture (around say early spring 2003?) that it was not wise for regimes to conceal WMD programs, given the unpredictable, but lethal American military reaction.

...one result of the 2003 war ... might have been the elimination, for some time, of two growing and potentially nuclear threats to American security....

A.J. Strata at the Strata-Sphere:

... Iran stepped down from developing nuclear weapons in 2003 (after we invaded Iraq [hint, hint])...

... we spooked them by taking out Saddam so damn fast they stood back for a while from building their bombs....

So we laid waste to a country that posed no threat to us, killed and injured massive numbers of civilians, sent into exile literally millions more, and fomented a civil war -- but it's cool because we scared other countries into not messing with us.

Basically, they're telling us that even though Thomas Friedman, given a do-over, might not give his notorious "Suck on this!" recitation of why it was necessary to go to the Arab/Muslim world and do serious harm anywhere we chose just to prove that we could, they would happily give the same recitation.

****

UPDATE: dnA called it.