Jonah's on a role today. Here's another, less ranty piece that says what I've been trying to figure out how to say:

To his critics, it seems, Bush's error is that he offered too many reasons to go to war, except when he offered too few. When the news is that no WMDs have been found, WMDs become Bush's only reason to go to war. Back when the WMD angle had yet to be verified, the problem was that Bush offered too many rationales. Which is it?

Watching the TV news and listening to NPR lately, I was beginning to think I imagined all those complaints about Bush throwing out everything but the kitchen sink as a reason to go to war. Or maybe I thought of all those reasons, or read them in the National Review, but Bush never gave them publicly. But no:

In major speeches he touted the importance of democratizing the Middle East. Administration officials pointed out that Saddam was the only world leader to applaud 9/11, and that he was a major source of funding for suicide bombers in Israel. They argued that removing Saddam would have a positive impact on the peace process. President Bush made a masterful case to the United Nations that, in the post-9/11 world, the world body could not afford to let a dictator — one who had gassed his own people and invaded a neighbor — flout its countless resolutions with impunity.
These rationales don't add up to 23, but who cares if they do? What important decisions have you ever made in your life that have depended on a single variable. We don't buy cars for a single reason. (Oh, it's blue! I'll take it!) Why should we launch a preemptive war for a single reason?

Exactly.