The Bush Doctrine:
What the Left Had to Say About Pre-Emptive War...
...and the Big Lie the Left is Telling Now
In comments to this post (scroll down - it's two below this one), one reader claims the Left opposed the war in Iraq because President Bush claimed Iraq had ties to the September 11 attack but that was false and therefore the war was "pre-emptive." Writes the "Anonymous Blogger":

Before the war the criticism was two-fold: starting a preemptive war with Iraq was wrong and stop trying to tie 9/11 to Iraq. That is, the critics correctly didn't believe there was a connection and thus, it was a preemptive war

Hogwash. That's counter-factual retroactive spin.

Bush always described Iraq war as a pre-emptive war - he never claimed it was in response to Saddam being directly involved in the 9/11 attack.

Here are links to three pre-Iraq War articles from prominent Lefty sources, all critical of the doctrine of pre-emptive war.
Link 1: Todd Gitlin in Mother Jones.
Link 2: Common Dreams.org (UPDATE: Link doesn't work? Try http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1011-03.htm)
Link 3: Ralphie Nader

You'll note none of those articles provide any evidence that Bush was falsely tying Saddam to 9/11. All of these Left-wing sources recognized that Bush was proposing a pre-emptive war against Iraq, not a war in response to some alleged involvement by Iraq in the 9/11 attack.

By the way, the Bush Doctrine of the right of the U.S. to engage in pre-emptive war is contained in this document, titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, released in the fall of 2002. Chapter 5 of that document defends the policy of pre-emptive war, and does not mention Iraq nor state or imply a direct tie between Saddam and the 9/11 attack

And here is a LINK to a major policy address Bush gave in October 2002 outlining the case for war against Saddam's regime. Nowhere in the speech does Bush explicitly or implicitly tie Saddam to the 9/11 attack. In fact, here is what he says about Saddam and al Qaeda:

sophisticated delivery systems aren't required for a chemical or biological attack; all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it.

And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam Hussein's links to international terrorist groups. Over the years, Iraq has provided safe haven to terrorists such as Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans. Iraq has also provided safe haven to Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing an American passenger. And we know that Iraq is continuing to finance terror and gives assistance to groups that use terrorism to undermine Middle East peace.

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy - the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

Note that Bush very carefully does NOT include the 3,000 dead of 9/11 in the total of American dead at the hands of terrorists with ties to Saddam.

The media and the Left are right, however - there IS a Big Lie being told. It is being told by the Left and its willing accomplices in the press. The Left and the press now falsely accuse Bush of telling a lie about Saddam and September 11. But it is they who are lying.

UPDATE: Bush was not the first President to adopt pre-emption as a national security strategy. So says this Washington Post article:

The intention, in theory, is not fundamentally new. The Clinton administration's Presidential Decision Directive 62, 'Protection Against Unconventional Threats to the Homeland and Americans Overseas,' had classified language that one former official summarized as: "If you think terrorists will get access to WMD, there is an extremely low threshold that the United States should act' militarily."

Incidentally, the article makes no mention of the assertion that Bush was implying Saddam had direct involvement in the 9/11 attacks.