There are many enemies of the US developing WMD that we know actually ARE doing it or have done it (Korea and Iran). Your concern for Iraqs capacity to do so is not honest, and is a purely rhetorical device. Your accusation that I am saying that we have to let the bad guy shoot first is also rhetorical and dishonest. We simply have to KNOW the bad guy is about to shoot, and if we want to be the good guy, we have to be RIGHT about that.

For the record, I would not cry very hard if the nuclear reactors in Iran and North Korea had a sudden attack of stealth bombers. But that's just me.

What 9/11 proved is that knowing the other guy is about to shoot is not that easy a proposition, which is where the concept of preemption became an issue. As many people have pointed out, you only get a smoking gun after it has been fired.

Let's look at a scenario. If Saddam developed WMD, would he build ICBMs and fire them at Washington? Not bloody likely. I don't think even North Korea would do that, unless the Fearless Leader goes the entire way off the end of the pier (not completely out of the question IMO). What North Korea could do, and has done in the case of conventional weapons, is slip weapons into shipping crates and haul them on freighters to third party nations. This latter is what really makes the North Korea nuclear program dangerous, not that they would hit us with a missile. And this is also what Saddam would have done.

Say Saddam did whomp up fifty pounds of anthrax and decide to let it dribble into the hands of someone nasty. Anonymously, of course. How the hell do you detect this ahead of time? Unless somebody defected and told us ahead of time, how would you know? And would you believe the defector? If the CIA popped up now and said that North Korea or Pakistan was going to sneak one of their warheads to the PLO next week, would you believe them? Why or why not? And what would you propose doing about it on that level of evidence?

We are in the position of troops in an open field, surrounded by thick forest. You know there are snipers out there. How do you tell one is about to shoot you, before he actually takes a shot? If you're lucky, you catch the sun on his rifle. How lucky is that? Hey, we could have busted the 9/11 guys for suspiciously taking airline piloting courses. The World Trade Center would still be there, and liberals would be ripping Ashcroft a new one for abusing the rights of innocent Arab pilots.

Your "five statements" have been twisted to the point that it would take a lot of work to untwist. But a short treatment:

1) Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Not only did he have them, but we had definite knowledge of their location (tikriti, and areas north of Baghdad according to rumsfeld). Not only where, but how much was claimed as known, down to Tonnes Litres, Gallons. (According to Powell)

2) Saddam had active programs for production of said weapons

If you look at Powell's statement to the U.N., the numerical amounts discussed were amounts that Iraq was known to have had, but had not accounted for since. These numbers were from the U.N., not the United States. The evidence seen by the CIA in satellite photos matched known weapons program profiles. One seems to forget that the information we are getting now on all this would have been utterly impossible to accumulate with Saddam's regime active. Certainly the U.N. would not have found it.

That Iraq was obviously not cooperating with the U.N. before the war, and was in fact concealing things that it was mandated to reveal by the United Nations resolutions, is beyond argument, and much of Powell's statement to the U.N. was intended to show this non-cooperation and concealment. Kay's report further proves this.

I'm not sure what you would need as evidence of "active" programs. Apparently, unless there is a dedicated factory producing anthrax by the ton, it doesn't count to you. Read Kay's report again, and tell me that Saddam had given up on his ambition to develop WMD.

3) Saddam had active programs for the acquisition and manufacture of Nuclear Fissile weapons and materials. Including that Saddam may be 6 months away from 'the bomb' (According to Bush and Cheney)

The 6 month figure was given by intelligence sources as how long it would take Iraq to build a bomb given a source of already-refined fissionable material. I have seen nothing that disproves this. This would, of course, be true for many countries, not just Iraq. Hell, given a trunkload of U-235, I could build a goddam Little Boy gun bomb. Someone else would have to do the lathe work.

What has been forgotten in the hoopla about things like the aluminum tubes, is that it was illegal for Iraq to possess such tubes for any reason. Many of the other items discussed fall into this category.

4) That Saddam had allies in international terrorism, namely AL-Qaeda, and was conspiring to transfer WMD to those allies for use upon americans. (According to Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld )

That Iraq had connections with terrorism in general has been proven, and I'm getting tired of posting the same references over and over. You believe the sources you want to believe, and ignore the rest. The other alternative is assuming that terrorists could live and work in Iraq without Saddam's knowledge. That Iraq had connections with Al-Qaeda specifically is less evident, but I'm not sure why only that particular Islamist group should be considered a threat.

5) That saddam had developed unmanned drones that could spray WMD on American soil if transported to just shy of our borders (Powell)

I don't know why you picked this one. I never considered this a real issue, and had it been the only thing on the list, would not have considered it a reason to go to war. In any case, the drones were a threat to Iraq's neighbors, including Israel, more than us.

You know, the real issue is one you and others keep ducking.

We went into Iraq on the best evidence available. It was obvious the U.N. wasn't going to get the job done, and that Saddam was effectively concealing things. I have seen nothing since then that convinces me that the U.N. would have found ANYTHING that Kay and others have been turning up.

Before the war, almost everyone conceded that Saddam was doing something nasty, and the only issue was how to deal with it. Anyone who tries to tell you they knew for sure last year that Iraq had no active weapons programs is lying to you. Hell, YOU thought Iraq had WMD.

Bush had a choice: wait and see what happens, trust Hans Blix and the French and hope for the best, or go for certainty. He did what he did at enormous political risk, and he isn't out of the woods yet. Whether he turns out to be a hero or a goat may take years to decide.

You know, I think we can all agree that if Bush had in his hands before the war all the information Kay and others have uncovered over the past six months of digging, he might not have made the same decisions. Is this kind of hindsight a valid criticism? Is there anyone who could plausibly state that the United Nations could have done that level of digging, even over years, while Saddam was still in power?

I don't know why Saddam behaved exactly like someone harboring a load of WMDs. There is merit to the "lousy bookkeeping" theory (sheer bureacratic screwups were the source of much lost WMD info). There is merit to the "Emperor's New Clothes" theory (the scientists were stringing Saddam along to stay unshredded). There is merit to the "Scarecrow" theory (Saddam pretended to have WMD to frighten his neighbors.) There may be other scenarios that work. The reality may be a combination of all these.

If a cop shoots a guy in a bank robbery who is sticking his finger out in his pocket to look like a gun, is he a bad cop?

What is pissing me off is trying to cook this up into a scenario where Bush, Blair, and the various intelligence forces knew damn well that Iraq had less than Saddam advertised, and lied about it.