I’m not sure what the point of this poll question is:

Forty-nine percent (49%) of Americans say that President Bush is more responsible for starting the War with Iraq than Saddam Hussein. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 44% take the opposite view and believe Hussein shoulders most of the responsibility.

First of all, Saddam started the “War with Iraq” fifteen years ago, way back in August 1990, when he invaded Kuwait. That war didn’t end until March, 2003, when he was deposed, because there was never a peace treaty from the first Gulf War, and he was in continuous violation of almost all of the UN resolutions that were put in place as conditions of the truce.

Now certainly, the president does have responsibility for taking action to finally end (not start) the war with Saddam. But I don’t really know what it means to say that someone started a war, or what value it has in assessing whether or not they were right to do so. Technically, one could say that Israel started the 1967 war, because they had to preempt what would otherwise have been a devastating attack by Arab forces massed on her borders.

So what?

Why is Rasmmussen even asking this question? The issue is not who “started the war,” but whether the war was just, and necessary for the purposes of national security. Talk about “who started it” is the mentality of the playground, which seems to be where the minds of many of our so-called opinion leaders reside these days.