That the administration only needed to demonstrate the strong possibility that the weapons were there, and that the regime was hiding them and refusing to cooperate.

Thus the "collosal embarassment" you claim is, in fact, the exact sort of post hoc analysis you criticize. He didn't need to have them. He needed to be acting like he had them, and refusing to cooperate.

Now, if you don't count the Al Samoud II missiles, the chemical shells, the mustard gas dumped into the Tigris, the mobile weapons labs, and the scientists who've come forward to admit they were working on these programs, then I suppose you could say "nothing" has been found.

But otherwise, this is nonsense, James. We were confident he had them. He did have them, although perhaps in smaller quantities than thought. So what?

As for the moral justifications for taking him out: taking out a brutal dictator isn't alone sufficient reason for doing something like this. However, it absolutely obliterates any of the moral objections by the anti-war crowd--indeed, it was immoral to oppose the war on human rights grounds.

On the grounds that it wasn't in our strategic interests? The case was made in myriad ways beyond WMDs by members of the administration and by the punditry, as well as the common sense of everyday people.

Post-hoc cries that there aren't enough WMDs ring very hollow to my ears.

I think the fact that it is embarrasing that we haven't found large caches of WMD is undeniable. Administration officials are backpeddling and otherwise acting embarrased. And, of course this is a post hoc assessment: how else are we going to judge whether the case was made? I criticize a post hoc casus beli--that's different, since one presumably should base one's assessment of the outcome on the criteria set forth a priori.

I disagree that "That the administration only needed to demonstrate the strong possibility that the weapons were there, and that the regime was hiding them and refusing to cooperate." That's a phemonenally low bar for war. And even most of us who supported the war aren't very impressed by " Al Samoud II missiles, the chemical shells, the mustard gas dumped into the Tigris, the mobile weapons labs, and the scientists who've come forward to admit they were working on these programs." Lots of states have chemical and biological weapons. The case for going to war against Saddam's WMD wasn't that maybe he used to might have kind of had some small quantity but rather that he possessed them in such quantity to constitute a threat. It may well be that we'll prove that he did and either 1) destroyed them to make us look bad or 2) hid them so well that we haven't found them yet. That doesn't make the awkward period we're going through now less awkward.

I've also pointed out in other posts that the Saddam-terrorist ties are much stronger than most of the war critics believed. I merely wish our case had been built on that, a far greater rationale.

The word "hoax" is mighty strong, and you'd better be prepared to explain why this "hoax" has been regularly perpetrated for over a decade, by Democratic and Republican administrations, by Hans Blix, and everyone else involved in it.

An enemy surrendered and accepted disarmament as one of his surrender conditions.

The enemy failed to live up to those surrender conditions--which absolutely no one disputes.

It is therefore a phenomenally HIGH bar to suggest that we must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt not only that he's not complying with his surrender conditions--which to this day no one disputes--but that the failure to comply involved massive quantities rather than merely dangerous quantities.

I also re-iterate: the WMD case was made primarily for the UN. I am not the UN and neither are you, and both the administration and many others made cases for action beyond the WMD issue.

It's a rather astounding bit of historical rewriting, to me, to suggest otherwise.

Intel Hoax was the title of Safire's article, an intimation he rejects and with which I disagree.

I blame the Administration for over-hyping WMD in order to appease the UN--a venture that proved futile, anyway--rather than making the case for war on the more powerful issues. I don't claim that they made it all up, just that they overemphasized WMD and went out on a limb.

I also re-iterate: the WMD case was made primarily for the UN. I am not the UN and neither are you, and both the administration and many others made cases for action beyond the WMD issue. I don't dispute this. However, by making WMD the crux of the UN case, Bush elevated this as Issue Number One in the eyes of the world. And, given the extent to which the public pays attention to these things, to the American people as well.

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