American Prospect Online - The Right's Denial: "...Of course, one way conservatives defend the faith is to argue that the conservatism of contemporary Republicanism isn't really conservatism at all. The invasion of Iraq, in this telling, was the handiwork of Wilsonian interlopers who had strayed unaccountably into Republican ranks one night when the barn door was left ajar. But in fact the invasion of Iraq and the doctrine of preventive war have a sterling conservative pedigree; they were handed down from the right-wingers in the early years of the Cold War who rejected the strategy of containing communism and argued instead for rolling it back (an idea that Dwight Eisenhower considered sheer madness).
As well, conservatives at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue saw the war in Iraq as a way to gain a political advantage over the Democrats, who had backed the war in Afghanistan but who could be pilloried as appeasers for failing to grasp the need to roll into Baghdad. To argue that Iraq was not the conservatives' war requires expunging every congressional vote, administration speech and talk show rant of the past four years..."
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