James Carroll in the Boston Globe: Was this war necessary?

At a press conference in Japan the day after David Kelly's body was found, Tony Blair was asked, ''Have you got blood on your hands, prime minister?'' Alas, there is an ocean of blood on the hands of Tony Blair and George Bush. Whether shown to be ''lying'' or not, they shunted aside the ambiguities and uncertainties that characterized the prewar intelligence assessments of Hussein's threat. And though, as I argued last week, there is a long tradition of leaders manipulating intelligence estimates for their own preset purposes, the act of war is in a special category. When disputed intelligence is the basis of war, then the leader's reading of that intelligence had better be proven true. Otherwise the just war argument from necessity fails.

No wonder the dispute won't die. The questions matter too much. No wonder polls are shifting away from Bush. Citizens of the United States do not like to think of themselves as wanton killers. No wonder American soldiers in Iraq are openly expressing doubts. A democracy's first requirement of military discipline is the army's belief in the moral necessity of its mission. No wonder, even, pressures of the dispute may have driven one man to kill himself. The issue is mortal: Was George Bush's new style ''preventive'' war just another war of aggression, after all?

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