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The point that everyone seems to miss these days is that if Saddam had allowed thorough weapon inspections rather than playing games, as he was required to do by the ceasefire agreement and UN resolutions, there would have been much less uncertainty. Saddam was acting like he was guilty so that everyone assumed that he was. It's like a person pulling a toy gun on a police officer and getting shot. If you pretend to be a threat, don't be surprised if people believe you are a threat and act accordingly.

The point that everyone seems to miss these days is that if Saddam had allowed thorough weapon inspections rather than playing games, as he was required to do by the ceasefire agreement and UN resolutions, there would have been much less uncertainty. Saddam was acting like he was guilty so that everyone assumed that he was. It's like a person pulling a toy gun on a police officer and getting shot. If you pretend to be a threat, don't be surprised if people believe you are a threat and act accordingly.

Agreed. There's also the annoying little fact that we were under no obligation to get permission from the UN in the first place, or even keep them informed. As many of us argued at the time, why even bother? All we were doing was risking that the words would be used against us later. And indeed they are.

(For the record, I never thought WMDs should have been used as the main reason for an attack on Iraq in the first place. Removing Saddam was its own purpose.)

"It's like a person pulling a toy gun on a police officer and getting shot. If you pretend to be a threat, don't be surprised if people believe you are a threat and act accordingly"

Especially when you have a history as a murderer, liar and all around tyrannical maniac.

All good points in both of your posts. This whole Iraqi WMD debate in the media is a waste of time because it doesn't include the highy classified information that isn't available to the public, to leaking Senators, or to Col. Wilkerson. I believe the most highly classifed intelligence is information from high-level informants inside Saddam's regime, and only a handful of people had access to this information because of the critical need to protect these informants.

Condi Rice made an interesting statement several months ago that of course went unnoticed by the press. She was on Hannity's show and was discussing WMD when she said "Of course Saddam's regime had weapons of mass destruction." This happened earlier this year, after the Kaye report had been released. So my feeling is that a few very high level people in the Bush Administration know that Iraq had WMD, probably chemical weapons, and they know what happened to the these weapons. But the proof can't be released to the public because this evidence also is from senstive sources, possibly inside Syria. I am continuously surprised at how the pompous MSM assumes that they have all the intelligence about Iraq and that everything has been made public. Media people act like they know nothing about how the intelligence agencies operate.

was acting like he was guilty so that everyone assumed that he was. It's like a person pulling a toy gun on a police officer and getting shot.

Unless you were one of those people saying we didn't need to go to war, that the WMD info was trumped up. Then you can basically say you knew it was a toy gun. The tough part is that if you go back to 98, all the Democrats were saying all the same BS the Bush Admin later said. But memories are short, and so they can harp on that, and they do. Their lack of a desire to win is what makes them unelectable, even if the current crew are bunglers.