The military consequences of the peace

Condi Rice has a new Iraq war theory --

QUESTION: Do you (inaudible) when people come and say, well, you guys created this problem [Iraq rebuilding] in the first place. You can go back to them and say, well, oil for food, everyone signed off for it well before the war.

SECRETARY RICE: The situation with Iraq has not been normal. Before that, they were just a huge threat. Then, there was a war in 1990, 1991. The invasion and then the war. And there were certain sanctions put on Iraq that I think are unparalleled in international – probably in international history. I don’t know. Maybe the ones that were put on Germany at Versailles.

So the post-Kuwait sanctions were in the same league as Versailles and are part of the current problem. That's quite an assessment of the diplomacy of George Bush Senior, although it does serve the purpose of the endless need for Saddam-Hitler comparisons.

It also implies that Condi always knew that a second war with Iraq was coming, even before 9/11.

UPDATE: An interesting post from John Quiggin at Crooked Timber about the highly selective memory in the USA of World War I. Which of course makes it ripe for the picking by the likes of Condi.