War and pleas

If you know me at all, you probably know that I’m not in favor of attacking Iraq. You probably also know that I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I like my science skeptical, and I like my arguments backed up by data.

So you can imagine how much this page rattled me. If you can’t tell why, read the statement of principles on that page. Then read the names at the bottom. Then read the date.

OK, so it’s not the smoking gun. It’s basically a bunch of hard-liners whining, “We miss Reagan.” However, when you think about statements like “challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values”, you might decide that the people on that list were planning this war long before September 11th gave them an excuse. If you start sliding down that slope, maybe it’ll occur to you that Afghanistan qualified as another “hostile regime”, so maybe there were other reasons to attack them, too.

But that’s paranoia, right?

Update: Jaime points out this story about the new “Moron Majority” that believes Saddam was behind the September 11th attacks. I wouldn’t put it so strongly, but it really does surprise me how easily people are misled.