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Absolutely?
Sometimes you have to go to the regional newspapers for the punchy editorials. The Pentagon's announcement that the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction officially ended quietly in late December provokes the Virginia Pilot to observe, "And America is left with a seemingly endless war in Iraq, but without a rationale for it."...

..."Walters: But was it worth it if there were no weapons of mass destruction? Now that we know that that was wrong? Was it worth it?

"Bush: Oh, absolutely."

Bush's response contains three elements.

1) The US was not alone in being wrong about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. All the other nations did, too.

2) Saddam was dangerous.

3) Absolutely.

When is someone going to call him on this inanity? The Belgians didn't have intelligence assets inside Iraq that could have given them an independent view of the question. Whatever the world believed, it mostly believed because the United States disseminated the information.

Moreover, it is not true that there were no dissenters. The State Department's own Intelligence and Research Division dissented. French military intelligence dissented. What Bush is saying is either untrue or meaningless.

As I have pointed out before, Saddam without weapons of mass destruction could not have been "dangerous" to the United States. Just parroting "dangerous" doesn't create real danger. Danger has to come from an intent and ability to strike the US. Saddam had neither. He wasn't dangerous to the US. It is absurd that this poor, weak, ramshackle Third World state should have been seen as "dangerous" to a superpower. That is just propaganda.

Calling Saddam "dangerous" as an existential element without regard to the evidence falls under the propaganda techniques of name-calling and stirring irrational fear.

As for "Absolutely," it is a weasel word. It is not an argument. It is a species of hand waving. It is cheap.

Bush has figured out, apparently, that some in the American public respond, rather like the apes to which they deny they are related, to posture, grunting and body language rather than to reason and evidence. When I see him smirking and gesturing, I can't help thinking of the ape General Thade (Tim Roth) in Tim Burton's remake of the Planet of the Apes, which used scientific findings about primate behavior and hierarchy to inform the acting.

"Absolutely" used in this way is a vocalization that actually functions as an intimidating agonistic display meant to close off further dialogue by the silverback....