LONDON -- Supporters of the war against Iraq have a point: The row in Britain about the "evidence" of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's deadly intentions toward the West is more froth than substance.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, alone in the world it seems, is still saying that all the evidence presented to the House of Commons and British people was true, accurate and well-founded. Nobody else who supported the war believes this, and they are hardly bothering to argue it. Rather, they are saying "What does it matter?" The basic argument for attacking Hussein's regime by attacking Iraqi installations and buildings was, and is, well-founded. It was not changed by small details of buying uranium from Niger or determining how long it actually would have taken for Hussein's men to arm a warhead.
And this I think is true. The Blair/Bush imperative for war was not about Hussein's conventional war capability as such. It was about the need to introduce American military power to the Middle East. This new factor in the Middle East should fundamentally change the workings of power in that region, which, unhappily for the United States, combines Islamism and oil.