March 2, 2006: Conservative Columnist Reconsidering Earlier Support for Iraqi Occupation, Says Facts Contradict Administration’s View

Conservative columnist George Will writes that he is reconsidering his earlier support for the Iraq occupation. Will writes that the Bush administration’s relentless rhetoric of victory “just around the corner” and the necessity to “stay the course” is increasingly based on supposition and wishful thinking, and is contradicted by the facts. “Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation,” Will writes. “And after two elections and a referendum on its constitution, Iraq barely has a government.” The government is riddled with corruption that, in correspondent Lawrence Kaplan’s words, “would have made South Vietnam’s kleptocrats blush.… [C]orruption has helped drive every public service measure—electricity, potable water, heating oil—down below its prewar norm.” The country is torn apart by sectarian violence that cannot be dismissed or negated by US rhetoric. Will concludes that “all three components of the ‘axis of evil’—Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—[are] more dangerous than they were when that phrase was coined in 2002.” [Washington Post, 3/2/2006]