The points made about Iraq before the invasion were:

- Saddam had a known history of pursuing, developing, manufacturing, and actually deploying WMD, including two separate nuclear weapons programs, one of which came within months of success.

And no, redefining nerve gas out of the "WMD" category is not going to fly.

- Many of the known weapons stockpiles, at the time of the invasion, could not be accounted for to the satisfaction of inspectors or the U.S. For the record, 500 tons of a liquid the density of water, stored in standard 55 gallon drums and on standard drum storage racks, would occupy a space (or a hole) sixty feet on a side and 10 feet deep.

- Saddam undertook a massive program of deliberate deception and obstruction of the inspection process, including infiltration of the inspection process by his own agents.

- Saddam had known contacts with terrorists from a number of groups around the Middle East, not to mention his own homegrown terror operators. Surprisingly enough, there are terrorists in the world other than al Qaeda.

- The idea behind taking the Saddam regime out was that WMD, in particular gas and biological weapons, could easily be slipped to these terrorists, who after 9/11, had demostrated a willingness and ability to attack Americans on their home soil.

Nobody ever postulated that Saddam would suddenly start flinging nukes at America. It is far more likely that Iraq would have worked through proxies. This is still a major threat from other nations, in particular North Korea, which has already demonstrated its willingness to proliferate, and is a whole problem all by itself. We have made some progress with Pakistan.

Nobody ever said that Iraq was the only nation on Earth that supported or tolerated terrorism. From a strategic standpoint, it was the best place to start.