Andrew Leigh has moved to a new, more mnemonic location. He has a post which concludes that, although the Iraq war has turned out badly, it seemed like a good idea at the time. So, on the information available at the time, he suggests, he was right to support it. Much the same point has been made in discussion here. Tim Dunlop criticises this, pointing out that lots of people (in fact, the majority of people in most countries) looked at the same evidence and came to the (ex post) correct conclusion that war was a bad idea.

I want to pick up a different point. It’s still possible to argue (not convincingly in my view, but not absurdly) that who supported the war made a reasonable judgement on the available evidence, including the evidence supporting the existence of WMDs, provided by Bush and Blair. Only if you discounted this evidence, as bogus or at least slanted and exaggerated, could you draw the right conclusion. As we now know, the evidence was bogus and the whole UN process was a sham since Bush and Blair had decided to go to war anyway. But, someone who assumed that they were presenting the best available evidence, and accepted their repeated claims that war was a last resort, might reasonably have support the war.

However, Andrew wants to go further, saying “given the information then available, I still think Blair, Bush and Howard made the right call.” I can’t see how this claim can be defended. Clearly, Bush and Blair had the information that only later became available to the rest of us showing the spurious nature of the ostensible case for war.
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