' "Your entire pre-emption doctrine depends on the ability of the United States to gather accurate intelligence and make honest assessments," Waxman wrote. "The matter raises fundamental issues that cannot be ignored."

Waxman's observation sums up nicely in two sentences why I was bothered by WMD as a pretext for preemption before the war, and why I'm bothered by the lack of WMD found after the war. '

Is the only reason you were "bothered"?

"Bush and the Regimes were way too cavalier about breezily declaring war on Iraq based on murky innuendo and unsubstantiated allegations. I demanded better evidence then, and it's becoming clear now that I was correct to criticize the shaky rationale for the war. "

Yet, you did favor UN inspectors continuing, were you not?
Can I ask how long you thought the UN should continue? Say they had continue to this point and had only found the mobile labs, would you want them continue? Would it matter if these UN inspector had found these labs, despite not having them in the declaration? What would you suggest if the UN inspector had somehow run across, say a ton of nerve agent in say late July. What would you then decide to do. War? Or continue inspecting. What if Saddam decided "today" (in the altered reality of cont. inspections) that he not longer trusted the UN inspectors and demanded a new team be formed. Or simply hassled the UN inspectors like it did before their were 100k US massing on their borders.
Assuming you were the president would you now decide to invade Iraq and probably have +100 soldier die heat stroke by wearing chem suit, or take the gamble of Saddem not having chem weapons?
Wait for winter? Take 1/2 of the soldiers out of the region, or withdraw completely and come back later? And meanwhile have Press go on endless about how much money you are wasting, how much damage you causing to the US crediablity, etc, etc.

"A doctrine of preemption is a dangerous thing, and it should be used only in situations of the utmost gravity and upon compelling solid evidence. First time out of the gate and Bush is well on his way to discrediting his shiny new doctrine by demonstrating its potential for abuse. But, seeing as how I think it's a foolish doctrine anyway, maybe I should be grateful we got this out of the way earlier rather than later."

Now, what exactly is this "doctrine of preemption"? Does it only have to do with using ground forces? Or does it include all forms of warfare- including covert operations?