Come on, you think you can do an end run around me?

Recall that the French, the Germans the Russians[etc] never claimed there were or were not WMD in Iraq- If they did, please provide source and quote and I will gladly revise my claim. And please, do not choose- as you put it- a minister of silly walks or underwater basket weaving or somesuch.

I think they were simply unsure and unconvinced that WMD either existed or did not exist. As such, they held their tongue.

"Held their tongue???" Right. Half a dozen major nations are adamantly opposed to an invasion of Iraq, and they are not going to bring up the possible lack of Iraqi WMD as an overrriding reason not to invade because they "aren't sure." So they stay quiet on the subject. Get serious. I haven't researched this, but did any of them even bring up the fact that they "weren't sure" as a reason for caution?

If France, as an example, had no independent intelligence that Saddam had WMD, this would have been number one on the hit parade at the U.N. Bush would have had his nose rubbed thoroughly in this fact long before the war even started. You can do better than this.

The rest of your post is just an attempt to slide past the original point.

I like it how that, when it suits your rhetorical purposes (and those of your particular argumentative flavor), Germany, France etc are the axis of Weasels- total naive incompetents, not to be trusted etc.

But when it suits your purpose, they are to be taken seriously- namely a "they did it too so its not that bad" argument.

The same goes for your citation of the Clinton-era CIA data.

If I know a guy who commits murder arbitrarily, am I entitled to do the same?

I don't even understand your analogy of more than one nation interpreting the data the same way as "they did it too so it's not that bad."

Remember, the original thesis is that Bush either is incompetent, or lied. My response is that if this is true for Bush, it's true for the Clinton administration, true for many nations in Europe, and true for the U.N.

From my post:

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs."
-- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002