Imperial wars, then & now Posted: August 13, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Having found neither weapons of mass destruction nor a link to 9-11, the White House has retreated into its fallback position. It now defends Operation Iraqi Freedom as a necessary war to rid the Middle East of a brutal dictatorship and replace it with a democracy. That is, this was a war of democratic imperialism, as some of us said all along. The neocons exploited America's rage after 9-11 and steered the president into invading Iraq, in order to reshape its political system...