This latest information is only now coming out after five months--inside an occupied country we nominally control-- of searches, interviews, poring through tons of paper, picking over sources reliable and unreliable, and rehashing old intelligence with new information. Even now, this is not by any means a complete picture. We may not know the whole truth for many more months yet, if then.

So now Bush is a failure for not having discerned before the war details that we are only finding out now? What if the "Emperor's New Clothes" theory is true? Good God, if SADDAM thought he had weapons, and he RAN the place, how can American and British intelligence agencies be faulted for thinking so? People are forgetting now that most of the military positions we overran were heavily equipped for gas warfare. Saddam thought SOMEBODY had WMD.

Hindsight, as always, is 20-20.

As I remember the months before the war, the anti-war protestors, the Europeans, and the United Nations were telling us that war was not the answer, that we should disarm Saddam peacefully through the U.N. process, and other such.

Damn few, if any of them, stood up and said, hey, I don't think Saddam has any WMD or programs at all.

Our intelligence thought so. British intelligence thought so. The U.N. thought so. And despite best attempts to cover it over with their hind legs, the Democratic Party thought so too. So let's be a little realistic, okay?