The case for war was based upon the premise that the hundreds of tons of chemical and biologicial weapons he had produced BEFORE GW-I were still stockpiled somewhere. Our "evidence" for this was the lack of documentation that these materials had been destroyed. Perhaps that's because the Iraqi regime failed to accurately document their disarmament of these weapons. Perhaps we based the case for war merely on incompetent bookkeeping.

There was considerably more intelligence input into the decision to invade than the simple lack of documentation. There were many activities and pieces of evidence that made it look to the United States, Britain, and others like Saddam was still actively pursuing WMD development, and we have found at least enough evidence after the fact to convince a reasonable person that he was concealing resources to go ahead with such development in the future.

In addition, simple lack of documentation was not enough on its own to raise suspicion. Iraq was also incapable of or unwilling to cooperate with the U.N. in demonstrating in other ways that they had disarmed. Destruction sites were ambiguous, or not located. Physical evidence of destruction was absent or also ambiguous. The U.N. and the coalition were not counting only on written evidence to make decisions one way or the other.

And if we had decided to give Saddam the "benefit of the doubt," and been wrong? At least we know for certain he isn't going to be a threat now.

If this Newsweek scenario turns out to be accurate, Saddam did the same thing as a known felon threatening a police barricade with a realistic toy gun and getting shot down. Who do you blame for that? The cops, for not assuming it MIGHT be a toy gun and risking their own lives to try and take the felon peacefully?

Hindsight works really well. In hindsight, we would have hauled in all Arab immigrants taking flight lessons in 1999 and 2000. In fact, such an action would have had the ACLU down on the FBI like a duck on a June bug, but there it is.