So, what additional conclusions did you draw from the more recent U.N documents that I might have missed?

If you read all these documents, it was obvious that Saddam was giving the U.N. the runaround, and that the U.N. was perfectly happy to collect its paycheck while getting the runaround for the next several years. I've gone over the past history of the "effectiveness" of the U.N. in these areas, never mind the brilliant job they're doing now with Iran, and won't repeat it all here.

Regardless of what we eventually found, or didn't find, in the spring of 2003, it was not ridiculous to assume that Saddam was still doing exactly what he had been doing for many years, which was sneaking past the U.N. resolutions and restrictions placed on him. I will not stand by while people here insist that only Bush came to this conclusion.

You can take what comfort you can find in the WMD thing. There will probably be old bearded guys someday when Iraq is a prosperous and free country, still wandering around Santa Cruz muttering that it never should have happened because Saddam wasn't really dangerous and there weren't any WMDs. Can't speak for everyone here, but there are a lot of liberals out there who would not be supporting this war even if we had found a six megaton atomic arsenal buried in the desert.

I suppose it's better than the realization that free elections just took place in a country that would never have seen them had the Democrats been running things in the U.S. For that matter, I wouldn't even take bets on elections in Afghanistan under those circumstances.

There is one less major bastard in the world, one with a known history of developing and using WMD, and one with a lust for nuclear weapons that has been documented through two separate attempts to develop them, and as we are finding out, there are other ways to get them in the Middle East than building centrifuges.

I don't see why the speculation that he and his sons would have remained harmless for the next thirty years is any sillier than the "alternate universes" of mine that others here have derided.

"Wet fart in a sulphur bath?" Now THAT'S a WMD.