I asked you this question before. I'll ask it again. When? When will there be enough reality disfunctions with this administration for you to at least suspect incompetence?

There is an awful lot of space on the scale between incompetence and omniscience. Somewhere along there is something called making a judgment on the best available information.

- It's looking like some of the things intelligence people thought were there are not, at least not any more. It took five months to start piecing this together with people on the ground in Iraq and freedom of movement, and it's a long way from settled. Articles like the Time magazine were very informative, but still don't answer the basic question of why Saddam went to the mat for empty cannisters and piles of blueprints.

- It's looking like much of Saddam's WMD was in the planning or production stages, or in hibernation, as opposed to actively turning out stockpiles of weaponry. At least stockpiles bigger than a breadbox. There may be a box of anthrax laying around somewhere, but I don't think anyone is going to find any A-bombs. It would explain a lot of things, including bioweapons production trailers that had never seen use.

There were SCUDs. I don't know why more isn't made of that, but those weren't big-ticket items anyway IMO.

If you want to do an end zone dance over this, fine. I'm just as happy we put the kibosh on planned programs as on actual ones, and Bush never claimed Saddam had to be an imminent threat to justify what we did.

On the other hand, the interpretations of those bits of intelligence I saw before the war seemed quite reasonable. They still do. I can't come up with any reasonable alternative explanations for some of the things that were seen and heard. It's not like Bush went over there by himself with a Cessna*, took photos, and interpreted them up in his bedroom in the evening. If there are mistakes, a LOT of people were making them, including the intelligence networks of at least two nations, the U.N., the Congress, and two U.S. administrations. You have to be willing to admit that before we went in, the evidence presented would have convinced a lot of people. It did convince a lot of people.

Remember, the arguments we were hearing against the war were not that Saddam was not armed, but that war was the wrong way to disarm him.

In all the statements during the U.N. arguments, nobody stands up and says that the whole exercise is futile because Saddam has no weapons, and nobody stands up and says that Iraq has been cooperating with the U.N. resolutions just fine, thanks.

The image you are trying to project is that of George W. Bush standing alone in March of 2003, against an entire planet convinced that Saddam was a harmless little puppy dog. Or at least convinced that he wouldn't bite anyone we knew. And that isn't accurate either.

Worse, many people are trying to project an image of someone who KNEW Saddam didn't have live weapons, and went ahead anyway. That may be rub the Left the right way, but it makes no sense. Do you really think Bush and his cabinet would have claimed the weapons were there, while knowing they were not, and knowing that they would be found out inevitably? Before the next election? What's the goal, here?

I believe Bush went into this believing he was doing the right thing, and that what the intelligence people said was likely to be true. And I still think he was doing the right thing, given the alternatives. Also, considering the awful stuff everyone predicted that could have happened--or awful stuff that still could--it was a terrible political risk. Again, if it's all a ruse, what's the goal here?

And before you say making a judgment on best information is a hell of a reason to start a war, try and remember what the consequences could have been if the guess had gone the other way and we had pulled our troops out of the Gulf and Qatar and gone home leaving a load of mass death in the hands of someone who we knew would not hesitate to use it. Remember, we are talking about a regime with a known and proven history of pulling the wool over the U.N.'s eyes and concealing weapons programs.

Hindsight is always 20-20. Lord knows we could have handled Vietnam a little differently, too, knowing what we know now, but I don't see anyone claiming Kennedy knew damn well we'd be in there for years and lose 50,000 people without saving the country from communism.

People will be second-guessing Bush long into history. Heck, look at the "Maine," or the "Lusitania." Jury is still out on why we started some very old wars. But if Iraq manages to thrive as a free nation, it isn't going to matter. And maybe that's what pisses some people off the most.

And as for terror links, I don't know what would convince you that Saddam supported terror movements other than a photo of him and bin Laden in a hot tub together. I did see him in bed with Satan on "South Park" but I suppose that doesn't count.

*in a hot-looking flight suit, of course.