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Times Watch for 03/11/03
The Weekly Standard's "Preposterous Assertions" On Iraq
David Carr's Tuesday piece on the Weekly Standard documented the magazine's rising influence in Washington circles. In a botched attempt at a backhanded compliment, Carr tried to prove the Standard has succeeded in pushing far-out conservative ideas into mainstream discourse: "Five years ago, during the Clinton administration, The Weekly Standard made the broad, seemingly preposterous assertion that America was entitled and even compelled to engineer regime change in Iraq. But under the current administration, driven by 9-11, that contention has become conventional wisdom."
But it was apparently conventional wisdom back then, too. The very same "preposterous assertion--known as the Iraq Liberation act--was passed by the House (by a vote of 360-38), Senate (unanimous consent) and President Clinton signed it into law in October 1998.
(At the signing ceremony, Clinton said: "The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life....The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.")
Carr then warned that conservatives are literally lusting for conquest: "The Weekly Standard's willingness to domesticate and Americanize the globe, at gunpoint if necessary, gives a shiver of delight to most conservatives, but others wonder how that strategy might end."