Friday, June 27, 2003 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

Ellen Goodman / Syndicated columnist

Conned into a war, and nobody seems to care

BOSTON — Last month, when President Bush donned his coronation clothes and landed on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, I felt like the skunk at the victory party. I went around asking the partygoers: Where were the weapons of mass destruction?

What bothered me wasn't just whether we'd find the weapons we were warned about with such terrifying, repetitive certainty. The question was whether it would matter.

Would the American people care if they'd been conned into conflict? I was haunted by a congressional aide who said the absence of the smoking guns of WMDs wouldn't "sway public opinion much," because "everyone loves to be on the winning side."

The column on the con job filled my e-mail box with hundreds of incoming missives that ranged from an accountant who protested my "whiny screed" — "Get over it. You Lost. We won." — to a Californian who rued the "outrage fatigue" dulling the public's mind.

Since then, the Search for the WMDs has become the subject of O.J. Simpson jokes and milk carton images as well as some solid reporting. The president has switched seamlessly from proclaiming certainty about the weapons to certainty about the weapons programs. There's now a congressional inquiry asking whether the intelligence community offered faulty ingredients or the executive chef cooked up a recipe for war.