What Richard Perle has learned from the Iraq war:
- MUNICH, Germany, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Richard Perle, a key architect of the U.S.-led war against Iraq, said on Saturday the West should not make the mistake of waiting too long to use military force if Iran comes close to getting an atomic weapon.
“If you want to try to wait until the very last minute, you’d better be very confident of your intelligence because if you’re not, you won’t know when the last minute is,” Perle told Reuters on the sidelines of an annual security conference in Munich.
“And so, ironically, one of the lessons of the inadequate intelligence of Iraq is you’d better be careful how long you choose to wait.”
And he’s exactly right, if you understand him on his own terms – the longer you wait to attack a non-threat, the more apparent its lack of a threat will become, thus undermining public support for the predetermined outcome. Can’t have that.
(Via Arthur Silber, who has much more analysis of this and related matters.)