"Errors and Lies" about the Iraq war

Paul Krugman's May 18th column in the New York Times is titled "Errors And Lies."   It starts by pointing out that, thanks to Jeb Bush's botched answer, "we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago."

Most of the "political and media elite" are hoping to dismiss the subject as simply a terrible mistake -- and then move on.   Krugman continues: 

"Well, let’s not — because that’s a false narrative, and everyone who was involved in the debate over the war knows that it’s false.  The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong.  America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war. . . .

"But truth matters, and not just because those who refuse to learn from history are doomed in some general sense to repeat it. The campaign of lies that took us into Iraq was recent enough that it’s still important to hold the guilty individuals accountable. Never mind Jeb Bush’s verbal stumbles. Think, instead, about his foreign-policy team, led by people who were directly involved in concocting a false case for war.

"So let’s get the Iraq story right. Yes, from a national point of view the invasion was a mistake. But . . .  it was worse than a mistake, it was a crime."

Yes, that is the real problem here -- not the question Jeb tried to answer, nor the question he tried not to answer.   Are we going to do anything at all about those who committed these crimes?

Apparently not.    In fact, there's still a chance that Republicans will nominate Jeb, who has already named one of the architects of that scheme to his list of advisers on foreign policy.

Ralph