And don't call me Shirley.

That things can change in 5 years?

What? What would change? Sometime between Clinton's administration and Bush's, Saddam developed a violent allergy to WMD programs, scuttled them all, and destroyed all the weapons? And this with the U.N. inspectors kicked out? Maybe when Bush was elected, he was so terrified of the Evil Cowboy that he scrapped everything then out of fear of an invasion? And then, when his nation was surrounded by armies, got cute with the inspectors?

That intel used to support a war must be scrutinized even more rigorously than intel used to support a lessor purpose?

Not sure what additional information or clarification you think they would have found under more scrutiny. Bush: "Oops! Looks like the CIA under Clinton was full of shit! Everything they found about WMD was totally bogus! Who knew?" As for war, I dimly remember Clinton demanding a regime change and attacking Iraq with missiles. The fact that he didn't follow through is another issue.

The hard fact everyone is dodging is that if Bush is lying, everybody and their cat was lying too.

The situation, boiled down is this:

Before the war, almost everyone concerned with the Iraq issue firmly believed, based on the best information they had from many sources, that Saddam had WMD and/or the means of producing them.

There was considerable argument over whether Saddam with WMD was actually a threat to the U.S. and its allies, and even if he were, whether military action was the right approach to disarming him. Damn few if any were arguing that there were no WMD in Iraq at all.

With troops in place for many weeks, we jumped through hoops with inspections and the U.N. It became obvious long before the invasion that eventually there would be an invasion. Saddam had plenty of time to decide what he was going to do.

During the invasion, no WMD were used on our troops, although everybody...EVERYBODY...expected it. However, large quantities of Iraqi protective suits, antidote injectors, and other WMD defense systems were found almost everywhere. If Iraq wasn't going to use WMD, they sure as hell thought we were going to.

Now, we can't find stockpiles of WMD or factories to build such that are easily identifiable. Given the long warning period Saddam had, there are a number of plausible scenarios to explain this other than Bush lying about them.

These include (off the top of my head):

- Very good concealment of facilities and storehouses. Saddam was fully aware of our satellite and drone capacity for years, and would have taken this into account. God knows what's buried under the mountains and the outer deserts. The "Purloined Letter" approach, with innocent facilities easily convertable when the heat is off, would work too. Problem with this theory is that we should have pried this info out of scientists and personnel by now, although they have no incentive to connect themselves with WMD programs.

- Weapons were moved out of Iraq. They would have to be moved into a neighboring nation, since Saddam would know Iraq would be U.S. territory for some time. The scuttlebutt says Syria, and DEBKAfile even claims they are buried in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon (but then, that's DEBKAfile). This backdoor concealment would need to be known by fewer people, but begs the question of where the facilities went. Were they ALL on trailers? Well, at least SCUDS were.

- Weapons never existed in final form, but a fake program was in place to fool Saddam, and if it was good enough to fool him, it sure as hell would fool the CIA. (The Emperor's New WMD Theory). This actually seems to me to be the one that covers most of the current questions and inconsistencies. If the CIA bought into a fake program, one starts to wonder how many other foreign WMD programs may be Potemkin Weapons. Scientists would be highly reluctant to admit this if they thought Saddam still had a long reach.*

- Weapons were destroyed years ago, but for some reason Saddam chose to be confrontational with the U.N. on the issue. The U.N. demanded documentation of their destruction. I can actually think of plausible and innocent reasons such detailed documentation might not be available after the chaos of the first Gulf War, but why not admit it and throw the nation open to the U.N.? South Africa disarmed for the U.N., and was fully cooperative. The differences in how the two nations dealt with the U.N. are obvious.

There's a lot here that doesn't add up, but then neither does the idea that Bush and Blair made it all up. There's a real answer out there, and if people could back off the Bush-bashing long enough to think about it, maybe we can figure it out.