The Right Response

Jeff Jacoby uses some apt historical examples to vanquish those who are trying to judge the Iraq war by a false yardstick, ie. whether we would have gone to war in Iraq if we "knew then what we know now."

It's one of the best responses yet to the kind of question with which Tim Russert has delighted in pummelling Republicans with on "Meet the Press." Even so, Russert met his match with Mark Kennedy (Republican Senate candidate for Minnesota's open seat) last week. To that question, Kennedy answered:

We acted—you know, you can’t really play TiVo and rewind in the real world, but let me just say this: First of all, I stand by my vote. And second of all, we just got done talking about Korea. We just got done talking about consequences for actions. Seventeen U.N. resolutions. If we had let one of the top sponsors of terrorists, that was paying thousands of dollars to those families that had suicide bombers, if we had let 17 U.N. resolutions go by, what chance would we have of North Korea or China paying any attention to the resolution just passed yesterday?

MR. RUSSERT: So you’d still go into Iraq?

REP. KENNEDY: I stand by my vote. We can’t rewind. We acted on the information we knew at the time and acted correctly.