Both Kay and Duelfer's reports emphasized that Saddam's top priority was getting the sanctions dropped and the U.N. off his back, and that he fully intended to restart his programs when this happened. They also emphasized that not even Saddam's top people were aware of what the real WMD situation is.

Unless you believe that the U.N., without thousands of American troops backing them, was going to be any more effective in Iraq over the next ten years than they have been with North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, or Libya, then if Al Gore had been president, we would have just been pushing the inevitable off for a few more years. Again. I can only imagine what his sons would have done once in power.

You can't simply assume that the status quo would have remained stable forever. What we found in Iraq proved that, too.

We have taken Saddam off the board. The insurgency will peter out to a few diehard terrorists, no more capable of destabilizing Iraq than the Palestinian terror acts are of destroying Israel.

For all that some liberals claim they hope for a good end to this, the constant dismissal of good news, and the constant harping on setbacks, is revealing.