For Bush - and Obama - a Gut Check

by Scott Ritter

George Bush's candid interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson has one moment of awful truth - when the president, asked if he'd have gone to war had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, stated: "That's a do-over that I can't do." If only he could.

More than 4,207 US service members, 314 coalition troops (including 176 British fatalities) and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Iraqis might be alive, including, of course, Saddam Hussein, the former ruler of Iraq whom Bush promised to disarm together with America's "friends of freedom". Saddam, Bush proclaimed in the weeks leading up to his decision to invade, and subsequently occupy, Iraq, was "a dangerous, dangerous man with dangerous, dangerous weapons." The Iraqi dictator was "a danger to America and our friends and allies, and that is why the world has said 'disarm'".