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Here kitty kitty kitty ...

Saddam was in violation because he did not account for his old WMD.

Yo! Furball! Listen up!

Sadaam was in violation because he refused to account for the destruction of WMDs he said he already had! Big difference. Get it?

If the post had been obscene and/or completely unhinged, or if the poster had performed the classic liberal hit-and-run from the flames, then a ZOT! might be called for. In this case they presented a relatively coherent case and have stuck around for give and take.

But that does not mean he or she is right. They are just using the tunnel vision argument that the only stated and legitimate reason for overthrowing Saddam Hussein was his possession of "stockpiles" of NBC weapons. This is in fact far from the case. It's possible to argue for or against a doctrine and policy of preemption, but in the aftermath of not only 9/11 but the previous twenty five years of islamic extremist attacks against the USA and our allies, for better or worse that doctrine and policy are called for and in effect.

A policy of preemption (hitting before the other guy can land his punch) requires accurate intelligence and intelligence, except in rare cases, describes probabilities not certainties. When every major intelligence service in the world is telling you that someone like Saddam has in his possession a stockpile of Nuclear, Biological, and/or Chemical weapons is it responsible to assume they are all wrong? That is the underlying assumption of all of the critics of our policies in Iraq.

Beyond that, the growing evidence that most of whatever Saddam had in his possession was moved to Syria (see the recent and horrifying "testing" being done by the Sudanese and their Syrian supporters in Darfur), Qadafi's admission that a WMD consortium of Iraq, North Korea, and Libya has been operating in his country, and the finding of a Binary Sarin filled artillery shell in Iraq (capable under the right circumstances of killing several hundred thousand people) should persuade anybody but the most die hard Bush haters that action had to be taken to remove Saddam as a threat.

Rather than zotting every post which makes a case that we disagree with (as is usual at certain other websites), and so long as the poster is civil and willing to engage, I would prefer that we make and win the arguments on the merits.