Don’t go wobbly on us, George

Tony Blair, at least, is not taking the 9/11 Commission’s report lying down. According to this report, Downing Street is insisting that Saddam created “a permissive environment” for terrorists and al Qaeda operatives were in the country during his time in office. Since it was the announced policy of the Bush administration to strike against countries remaining that permissive towards al Qaeda after 9/11, such an environment would have constituted a basis for attacking Iraq, although President Bush never asserted it as such. The real point, as articulated by Downing Street, is that “Saddam’s was a rogue state which threatened the security of the region and the world.”
But many Democrats preferred a wait-and-see approach to Saddam — wait and see how far his WMD program gets, wait and see what comes out of Iraq’s contacts with al Qaeda, etc. These are the same Democrats who can’t stop complaining that President Bush wasn’t sufficiently proactive prior to 9/11.