But the CIA was not alone. Was the whole world wrong?

West. The sun sets in the west.

Where's my coffee, dammit?

Um, no. Occam's Razor says that the simplest theory is most probably true. The simplest explanation is that our intelligence was wrong and there were no WMD in the first place. To believe that we just haven't found them yet, you have to believe that (1) they were hidden, (2) we didn't notice them being hidden, and (3) no one in Iraq noticed they were being hidden, either (or at least, anyone who noticed is unwilling to tell.) Since the former requires fewer steps, it's the more likely explanation.

To believe they never existed is to believe dozens of intelligence agencies in different countries acting independently all found evidence of something that never existed.

THEN, since we know they existed at one point, you need to believe he destroyed the weapons BUT he never provided proof to the international community.

Further, you have to believe that although Saddam worked tirelessly to have the U. N. sanctions removed, he suffered thru a dozen years of those sanctions when all he had to do to have them lifted was admit he destroyed his weapons.

Of course, you also need to believe that he practiced hiding them for a dozen years but then would not actually be able to do it when the time came.

AND finally (only because I'm bored, I've got plenty more) you need to believe he would take his country to a war he surly would lose and give up his power over something he never had.

OH SURE, your thing is much more plausible. NOT!

The threat of the UAVs was not what Iraq was capable of doing with them, but what the smartest person possible could have done wtih them. In other words, to say that the UAVs were not a threat, one would have to assume that the Iraqis were too stupid to figure out how to use them . . . and I don't think I want my country's defense to be based on the assumption that we don't need to bother because the enemy is too stupid to figure out how to attack us.

Back in the 70s, the aparatchniks in the USSR told their higher-ups that production was booming, quotas were being met, everything was moving along. The CIA found these reports and believed them. After all, that's what they are telling their own Politburo. They wouldn't lie to THEM, would they?

IF you had the same case here, that would explain why Saddam acted as he did, why several independent intelligence agencies would have the same viewpoint. Once again, would anyone lie to Saddam, knowing what would happen if he were caught?

The fact that the US military camped on Saddam's doorstep for months prior to the war indicates that the danger from Hussein’s WMD was neither imminent nor immense.

But we can all agree that the President, the US Congress, American and Western intelligence agencies, the UN, even Saddam's own Arab neighbors knew in their gut that Saddam--and his sons--were a long-term threat. The Kay report agrees with this consensus. Clinton, in 1998, signed the Iraq Liberation Act, arguing that regime change in Baghdad was the only feasible solution to the Saddam problem

The Bush team knew that they could no longer rely on the UN embargo to continue keeping Saddam in his box--the UN's own Permanent Security Members were arming and trading with Saddam's regime.

http://www.khanreport.com/content/031203.html

Sanctions, which had killed nearly a million Iraqis, alienating vast swathes of the Muslim world, had become a recruiting bonanza for terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda. Bin Laden exploited the suffering of the Iraqi people to onboard jihadists against America.

The terrorist attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001 produced the need for a proactive rather than a reactive national security decision-making paradigm.

The State Department, reduced over the years to compiling and editing a list of Middle Eastern rogue regimes, terrorist entities, and their allies agreed that America needed a preemptive doctrine to combat rogue regimes that pursued WMD.

With the launch of the War on Terror, Bush signaled that we will no longer wait to be hit before we respond.

Last year, the Bush administration tied (rightly) Islamic terrorism to the lack of democratic freedoms in the Arab and Muslim world.

To ebb the production of brainwashed, repressed, angry, young Muslims committed to the destruction of America, Israel, and the West, America must commit itself to transforming the Middle East, Bush argued. This "forward strategy" is the project for the new American century.

Iraq is an important step in that process. We have shown that we can no longer turn a blind eye to the actions of Arab dictators--Muslim scholars and terrorist masterminds can no longer claim that the United States is not interested in democracy in the Arab world.

Iraqis have seen for themselves that their greatest enemy is not the United States, as Saddam claimed, but the individuals who continue to slaughter innocent civilians--as the terrorists who struck the Kurdish HQs did earlier today--to further their own agenda.

Countries like Syria, Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan--these last two the biggest challenges to the American project--have been sent a strong, unequivocal message: that America expects rapid fundamental reforms that puts an end to the production of the most deadly, undeterrable weapons of mass destruction--angry, brainwashed, martyrs dedicated to the cult of Islamic terrorism.

Well, they might have paid some attention to the only people who were actually on the ground in Iraq - the UN inspectors. Remember those guys Hans Blix and Mohamed elBaradei?

"I dunno, if Occam were here he would say we just have not found the weapons yet. However implausible that may be."

That gets more and more implausible each day (and it's really really implausible by now). The key point for me aren't the materials themselves, but the people: all the workers, soldiers, and grunts necessary to make WMD programs work. Where are all the squealers?

Shredded?

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