[stylin_geek]

AP blew the story on the report by the 9/11 commission, so I really don't see any reason to read further than the title on this one.

[Maceman]

Since the end of the war, however, weapons inspectors who combed the country have failed to uncover evidence that Baghdad had a current nuclear weapons program or had stockpiled chemical and biological agents.

Is this accurate? I seem to recall that even David Kaye said there was evidence that they had an ongoing nuclear weapons program, although there were no WMD stockpiles.

Does anyone have a better recollection than I do?

[cripplecreek]

If we ever get our intell straightened out, I just hope we will consider refusing to share intell with other nations. After all how many other nations intell services said the same things about Iraq but happily point to us and call us liars?

I'm not saying we should allow massive attacks on other nations, just that they should be told only what they need to know.

[Mister Baredog]

"It is an accurate, hard-hitting and well-deserved critique of the CIA," Levin said.

Who's scrutinizing Congress?

They have been screwing with this stuff for the better part of 25 years.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Fire Tenet. Oh, wait.

[ex-snook]

The dog that didn't bark.
============

Words & Music by Alan Jay Lerner & Burton Lane Recorded by Fred Astaire, 1933

How could you believe me when I said "I Love You"
When you know I've been a liar all my life?
I've had that reputation since I was a youth --
You must have been insane to think I'd ever tell the truth.

[Steve_Seattle]

I wouldn't be surprised if a week after the report is issued, we begin finding large quantities of prohibited weapons. Then we'll have to do a study to determine why this new report was so wrong.

[Steve_Seattle]

I still don't know why hardly anyone accepts the (to me, at least) quite plausible theory that Saddam hid, destroyed, or moved the WMD's during the year-long "rush" to war.

[alloysteel]

Is there any such thing as vincible stupidity? The same old theme keeps being pulled out and hammered on, the only reason we went into Iraq was because of the massive quantities of WMD ready to be trotted out and used in attacks at various targets around the world.

There were several reasons, not the least of which Saddam had failed to be in compliance with UN directives that had been passed a number of times on the Security Council. The UN was reluctant to enforce their own directives, it turns out, because there were several nations who were secretly dealing with Saddam in contravention of the Oil for Food Program. Sure there was oil coming out, but a commensurate amount of food and medicines were not being sent in and distributed to the populace within Iraq for whom it was designated, and there were widespread shortages in many pockets of despair. Turns out this was part of Saddam's domestic policy, wholesale punishment of non-compliant villages and regions, for entirely capricious reasons, such as attending the wrong mosque, or attending too often, or having the wrong ancestors.

Meanwhile, Saddam was treating the national treasury as his private bank account, spending judiciously in ways and places that insured that unrest continued, particularly between the Israelis and Palestinians. There was an indemnity paid for each successful "suicide bomber" that took out a number of Israeli citizens in any one location, payable to the bomber's surviving relatives. More than just the ghoulish aspect of sacrifice of one's own kin for monetary gain, it was a terror weapon delivery system, plain and simple, against non-military targets. Not a positive socially redeeming benefit.

And Carl Levin, of all people, himself a son of an ethnic group hunted and hounded from just about every country in Europe and western Asia, not standing up and being counted as being foursquare in defense of those other sons of this same ethnic group who have chosen to make Israel their homeland, is proof that some things are simply more compelling than mere blood ties.

Now someone like Michael Moore, American Hatriot, not being Jewish, betrays nothing when he expresses such loathing for the cause of the Israelis, by attacking Bush. George W. Bush is on the side of the angels with this one, smiting the enemies of peace, good will and representative government. And for doing so, he is vilified, called calumnious names, subjected to sabotage of his efforts, and pictured as doing the very things those who accuse him, are doing themselves.

In Iraq, the people of the West were abused and demeaned by Saddam in much the same vein of rage as what drives the American Hatriots in their dispute with the honest and just people of this country. "Honest and just" are ridiculed and laughed at as if they were a bad thing, and at heart, those attitudes are anything but. Some people try very hard not to be loved or lovable, and the simple impulse is to respond accordingly. Still, we may not simply ignore them, but we can isolate them and leave them impotent, a far more devastating response.