Who (aside from the craziest of the crazies) is claiming that Iraq never had WMDs? The claim is that the WMDs weren't present at the time when we were told that their presence was a basis for invading the country.

There isn't a lot you can do with WMDs. You can use them, hide them or destoy them. Since we know Saddam did the first and didn't do the last, chances are that he hid them. I don't get how our rationale is faulty in that case.

Uh, I don't think this is the smoking gun that Drudge seems to think it is. Take a look at what ABC itself says:

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Investigation/story?id=1616996

"One of the most dramatic moments on the 12 hours of tape comes when Saddam predicts —during a meeting in the mid 1990s — a terrorist attack on the United States. "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans a long time before August 2nd and told the British as well & that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction." Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop. "In the future, what would prevent a booby trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq."

Also at the meeting was Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who says Iraq was being wrongly accused of terrorism. "Sir, the biological is very easy to make. It's so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it."

So we should have waited till they were present, then? Like with Iran and North Korea?

I did not say the presence or development of WMDs were something we should ignore - if they pose a threat to the U.S., then there's a clear basis for attacking a country

I was simply addressing Karol's claim that people claim that the current nonexistence of WMDs means Iraq never had WMDs (which is silly - both on the part of Karol and any crazies who actually espouse that view)

(And are you suggesting that we should have already invaded North Korea and Iran? We've known North Korea and Iran were working on WMDs for years - not sure we really "waited" to take action - I think we tacitly decided to let it happen.)

Yeah, what's the timetable on Iran, anyway? It's conveniently between Iraq and Afghanistan...

This is AB(odycount)C News. They are not going to broadcast something that actually helps out the president.

Don't get your hopes up.

could someone please tell me how i'm supposed to read the drudge report? it's all text and it's a mess.

Nobody I know has EVER claimed Saddam NEVER had WMDs. We KNOW he did at one point because us, the French and YOU sold em to him. What was claimed was the entirely valid and vindicated argument that he didnt have any after 1998.

Yeah, text is usually pretty hard to read.

Uh, where'd that go? It's nowhere on Drudge now. Has he retracted it?

You can always view past stories on Drudge through this link: http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/dsp/links_recap.htm . It sorts the articles by the time and day they were published. As for WMDs, I know others may see it differently, but to me it's pretty clear that there were greater dangers in the world than Iraq when we invaded the second time, and Iran and North Korea were among them.

There is no evidence linking Hussein to terrorism, and a number of different accounts of a long-standing feud between Hussein and Bin Laden, as they were evidently blood enemies. And whether or not Iraq did have WMDs, it appears that Bush Sr had been effective in eliminating that threat during the first Gulf War.

I know, by this point in the post, Alceste is chomping at the bit to call me a liberal something or other. But it's not 100% the case. I support Bush Sr. in Gulf War I, and I try to analyze issues as I see them, and as others illustrate points to me. I attempt to avoid bias, though if that's possible, I don't know. And from that perspective, which you may want to criticize, I think this war was only Bush Jr. trying to gain some approval in Pappa's eyes, finishing what his Dad couldn't a decade before.

The fact that Abu Nidal committed suicide in a hotel room in Iraq was one assertion about Iraqs supposed link with terrorism. He was a syrian, possibly behind the Pan-Am bombing, and had come to Baghdad for cancer treatment, which wasn't going well, hence him topping himself.

It is my opinion that nuclear weapons have long out lived their usefulness. My concern with wmd's is small group killing a few thousand people here and few thousand people there. That sort of wmd program is almost undetectable. It aint like we are worried about Iran,Iraq or N.Korea for that matter launching an ICBM and hitting Washington. Today's war is about small smart strikes that pack a punch from out of nowhere. No one is capable of waging war like this other than the U.S. When someone starts making up the gap in technology, communication and fast transportation on a large scale then I will worry about a weapons program. The last thing I am worried about is someone launching a missle the size of an airliner 7,000 miles(least of all Iraq,Iran or Korea). Saddam is guilty of facilitating wmd's to terror groups from Russia for instance and that is the equivalent of trying to catch a guy doing a drug deal in a secret location in Iraq. They can clean that up in hours and he had months. A full scale nuclear attack is not feasable by anyone but the U.S and we can simply have the same military effectiveness with out the collateral damage. Hell I'd give Iraq a fully opperational nuclear program if I knew for certain that there would be no collusion with terrorists. The same goes for germ or chemical war fare, it simply is not applicable on a large scale, but in the hands of a few guys it can affect a number of small regions. Explain to me how you can find a program that small and manueverable somewhere in the middle of the desert? Think about how hard it would have been to catch the unibomber or 100 unibombers if he didnt write a manifesto and his family didnt cooperate, add to that a foreign country of vast desert and the dictator is moving you and your stuff through remote areas and underground tunnels. All you can do is stop the lines of supply and wait for the rats to surface. Saddam is the greatest line of supply for terrorism in in the world but Iran is a close second. Saudi Arabia may supply the cash but shutting down Saddam closed the mall(sure there are some rebels sneaking some side business) and now they have to find small boutiques and that is a huge accomplishment.

> The fact that Abu Nidal committed suicide in a hotel room in Iraq was one assertion about Iraqs supposed link with terrorism

Yeah, suicide. Right.

World's first suicide with multiple gunshot wounds to the head.