Mission Accomplished!

What BBC actually reported was:

Coalition experts are examining dozens of mortar shells found in southern Iraq which could contain chemical weapons.

US officials played down the find, saying the shells were probably left over from Saddam Hussein's 1980-88 war with Iran.

The 36 120mm shells appear to have been buried for at least 10 years, the Danes said.

The word now is 'preliminary tests showed they contained a liquid blister agent, the Danish military said.' I'm not sure how the time matters. The point was that we knew Saddam had weapons and he was supposed to prove that he destroyed them. Being unable to do so is what brought us to the point of war. Yes, there were and remain a range of reasons to go in but the spark that lit the match were the unaccounted WMD.
You seem pretty desperate for nothing to be found. You'd rather these weapons in the hands of people who seek to kill YOU. It's sad when Bush hatred has reached such demented levels.

Regardless of whether or not this specific story pans out, it's obvious (to me) that WMD's will eventually be found. Saddam had chemical weapons, he made no knwon effort to get rid them, ergo we will find them.

You seem pretty desperate for nothing to be found. You'd rather these weapons in the hands of people who seek to kill YOU. It's sad when Bush hatred has reached such demented levels.

If I am desperate, it is for the Administration and its acolytes to stop playing games and creating fictions. The imminency of the threat was misrepresented to us, as, later on, when the reason was changed from WMDs to terrorist links, were Saddam's links to al-Qaeda.

"Yes, there were and remain a range of reasons to go in." There have been valid reasons for going in for decades. But the reasons given by the Administration (and please don't insult us both by pretending that the Administration hasn't changed its story multiple times here to fit what it thinks the facts are most likely to be (or be swallowed)) were not valid, or consistent. THAT is the problem.

And there is no evidence to suggest that the absence of WMD's in Iraq means that there are now more WMD's in the hands of anyone else, much less people who are trying to kill ME. And to the extent that people are trying to kill me, I'd appreciate it if my government tried a little harder to prevent that, and a little less hard to cover its own ass.

Rick, I'll go slowly so you could listen and irrationally simmer with hate for Bush all at the same time:

Iraq had WMD. Everyone agrees on this point. There was no one making the argument, before the war began, that we shouldn't go in because there were no WMD. In fact, a major argument was that we shouldn't go in because Saddam would have nothing to lose in using his weapons against our troops.

If we can't find the WMD, and Saddam was never able to prove he destroyed them, then they must be SOMEWHERE, right? Or is this all part of Bush's imagination?

Silly Kashei. No matter how slowly you type, I can read at whatever pace I choose. Also, you used the incorrect verb tense.

Iraq had WMD. Everyone agrees on this point. There was no one making the argument, before the war began, that we shouldn't go in because there were no WMD

Plenty of people were making the argument that there was no imminent threat that required scrapping the (at least somewhat successful) inspection program. I certainly made the argument repeatedly that we would do better to toughen up the inspection program and pursue a hard-line course with international cooperation and clear goals and consequences than to go straight to war.

The issue is that our Government represented that there was a clear and present danger -- an imminent threat -- where there was none, in order to garner public support for a war that was unnecessary.

Does everyone agree Iraq had nuclear weapons, as Condoleeza Rice suggested in September 2002, and Dick Cheney in March of 2003? Biological weapons, as Bill Frist unequivocably stated in January 2003, and Colin Powell in February?

Colin Powell and Rumsfeld both claimed to know where the WMD's were, and virtually everyone in the administration claimed with some degree of certainty that WMD's would be found. Yet they are not finding them. This could mean that the WMD's were there, but were dispersed just prior to the invasion. If that is the case, then the invasion preciptated the dispersal of WMD's beyond Iraq's borders, potentially into the hands of al Qaeda, and thus was a pretty shitty move. It could also mean that the WMD's were there, but were destroyed just prior to the invasion. In which case there is nothing to worry about. It could also meant that there were no WMD's, because Iraq either did not have them or had already destroyed them. Again, nothing to worry about.

As far as I can tell (and I know you will provide me with the evidence if I am mistaken), our intelligence concerning WMD's in Iraq was weak at best, and the administration's changing of its purported reasons for going to war only supports the obvious conclusion that WMD's were merely a trumped-up excuse to move into Iraq. Either our administration far oversold the quality of the intelligence we had, or they have done a piss-poor job of securing and/or finding the WMD's in the wake of our invasion. Either way, I am hardly filled with confidence. Osama is still out there, and we're looking for WMD's that we only ever thought might exist.

'Also, you used the incorrect verb tense'
I don't know why reading you makes me so sleepy.
Your post tries to replace 'has WMD' with 'might use WMD' (imminent threat). Again, no one would've argued he didn't have them, because, again, he did, he used them for goodness sakes. If he did have them and couldn't prove that they had been destroyed (which was the terms of the ceasefire) then it's a problem (for those of us who care about terrorists killing us more than who is president) that we can't find them.

Just a few points:

1. If you wait until the threat is imminent before dealing with it, you've screwed up. Case in point: WTC. Case in point (2): North Korea.

2. "Colin Powell and Rumsfeld both claimed to know where the WMD's were." Reference please.

3. The whole point of WMDs (hate the acronym) is that they're small and do a large amount of damage. Looneys in Japan were able to make and use Sarin, even though the Japanese government was watching them because the government knew they were looneys. Iraq is about the size of California. Labs could be anyplace. And all our watching had to be from planes and satellites.

4. Saddaam was a cheapskate who liked palaces better than working weapons. Seems to me he thought bluffing was as good as having the real thing. Seems he thought the US wouldn't have the guts to call his bluff. His bad, not ours.

5. Our intelligence should have been better. Point conceded, but...

6. Our government is responsible for protecting us from hostile governments. Iraq was a hostile government. Call me crazy, but given the uncertainties of the situatioin, the potential consequences of underestimating the enemy, and the need to set a precedent other megalomaniacs could understand, I'm really really good with the Iraq project to date.

I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again: The more effort the Bush-baiters put into dissing the Iraq War, the more likely it is that the Democratic Party will down in flames next fall.

Mark:

1) If you go straight from second to fifth gear, you are unlikely to achieve long-term results you can use. Case in point: invading Iraq has not had any measurable effect on the terrorist threat. Instead, it has put more Americans in harms way. Plenty of lunatics who hate the US have long had WMD's (also hate the acronym) and not used them against us. Case in point: Pakistan; case in point: North Korea; etc.

2) Rumsfeld: "We know where they are". Powell: I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now. And don't forget Powell's speech to the UN.

3) That's the point now. The point then was, we have this strong intelligence, these mountains of evidence, that Saddam has weapons he's not telling us about that he has not destroyed, that he has not accounted for. Then it turned out Iraq wasn't buying yellowcake uranium from Nigeria, that the "mobile units" were just trucks, the aluminum tubes where just aluminum tubes, and that there is no evidence of WMD's in Iraq.

4) Seems to me calling Saddam's bluff cost a lot of American lives and resources that could have been saved for the real enemy -- terrorists.

6) Saddam was not a threat to the US in anywhere near the way that N. Korea, Osama, or even the Montana Militiamen. I am not a Saddam apologist, nor do I think we should pull out of Iraq now. I do however strongly believe that we made a serious tactical mistake in the "war on terror". The only precedents we set were: 1) striking a blow to the international rule of law that will no doubt encourage countries like India and Israel to engage in their own versions of Bush's "pre-emption" doctrine. 2) that the US will respond to attacks by a group of well-trained, well-organized terrorists from Saudi Arabia by tying up most of its military capital and a great deal of its civilian budget as well in an unrelated country for an indeterminate period of time.

Kashei:

You are the one who keeps trying to make this about "Saddam had WMD's", but as I have tried to make clear, the question is did Saddam have WMD's that were unaccounted for and undestroyed AND posed a threat to the US that could only be addressed by full-scale invasion.

The real issue is that the Bush Administration has never been straight with us about the reasons for invading, thus making it nearly impossible to assess, on their terms, whether it was a good idea, and/or whether it has been or will be a success.

Case in point:

Cheney in March: "we believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Rumsfeld in June: "I don't know anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons."

Everyone is making very good arguments on both sides.

Rick, thanks for the links. Again, I think the quotes indicate bad intelligence, not administration duplicity. I come to that conclusion through a conviction that no one likes pie in the face, and the paucity of WMDs in Iraq is definitely custard all over the administration.

On the other hand. pretty much everyone else thought Saddam had the damn things pre-invasion. I could dig up old quotes from Chirac et. al., but I'm pretty sure this horse is dead. One final flog, though: if Saddam lets the UN go the cavity-search route in Iraq, the war doesn't happen.

I am incredibly pissed off that no one in the establishment lost jobs over 9/11. So for me the intelligence failure isn't a trivial issue. Accountability counts. But just because we were (maybe) wrong about one factor in going to war doesn't invalidate the war as a whole.

I'm feeling too cynical to even respond to the "international law" point except for three words. Russia. Night goggles.

As to measurable reduction in terrorist threat, Libya giving up it's nuclear ambitions seems to me a reduction, inasmuch as it's one less(potential) resource for terrorists. And I do see linkage between the war and Libya's actions. But maybe I'm just a warmonger, and Libya is making these moves out of a sudden respect for International Law.

Rick, it's not that I love Bush; in terms of domestic policy, he's been somewhere between indifferent and awful. I just think most Americans don't care about the WMD issue, and do feel like we're doing the right thing in Iraq, and think that the administration is effectively addressing the threat from terrorism. I may believe that just because that's how I feel, but the poll numbers support my thesis.

Sorry for the long-winded comment here, and pardon me for injecting more cynicism into the mix, but even if you believe Team Bush deceived us, and even if that drives you to work for his defeat in the next election, you need to find a different issue. This one doesn't look like its working.

Believe it or not, my focus is not particularly to drive out Bush, but to bring about better government through dialogue, discourse and criticism. (That having been said, I think that bringing about better government is almost certainly synonymous with ousting Bush). The original purpose of my comment was simply to point out that Kashei was misrepresenting what the BBC article said when she posted, no doubt because, despite her later insistence that it doesn't matter, it matters a lot to her that WMD's be found, because that will be (to some) a vindication of sorts of the Bush administration.

The point is not WMD's, or the war in Iraq, as much as it is that this administration lied to us, is lying to us, and will continue to lie to us.

But since we're talking about Iraq, let me throw in one last thing: I agree that Libya's newfound spirit of cooperation is almost certainly a positive byproduct of the Iraq invasion. Another positive byproduct is, of course, the toppling of Saddam. It remains to be seen what the Iraqi people (and the U.S.) can build from the rubble of Baath. However, I was against the invasion, and still believe that there were and are much better, more effective ways of addressing anti-U.S. terrorism, and less drastic ways of both forcing Saddam to account for all of his WMDs and preventing future human rights violations. I was deeply troubled when it appeared we were going into Iraq without any planning or foresight whatsoever. Now that we are learning that the invasion was planned long in advance, I am even more skeptical of this administration's foreign policy acumen. Imperialism and the Kissinger/Cold War foreign policy that divided the world into Good and Evil and then treated everything in between as a proxy or a pawn is what (at least in part) led to the current state of affairs in the Middle East. I think Bush and Rumsfeld are cowboys and they are likely to make some very devastating mistakes.