The "discussion"
It began with ER's post, "smoking gun." I linked to sources that showed that ER was incorrect, and that Cheney's view of Saddam's intentions were backed by the weapons investigations themselves.
From the Duelfer key findings:
Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.
I got the usual load of bile in return, combined with outright pride in the fact that they ignored my citations. There never WAS a "discussion."
There are people here who don't like hard numbers. They don't like facts, they don't like research, they don't like anything that raises them out of the comfortable fog of conflicting opinions into an area where something may be objectively true or false. They'll crank numbers all day long on methane on Titan, but touch on their cherished political and personal mythologies and the response is fury.
I have rarely seen such a blatant combination of ignorance on the facts of various issues combined with the crystalline and arrogant certainty of their own views. On this issue and many others. It's not just resistance to the idea that I might be right, it's resistance to the idea that there even IS a real answer.