Clearly those who put forward the "problematic" scenario were right. Would that George W. Bush had had the foresight to understand what he was getting himself into, but foresight is not his forte.
How can you say this was a problematic scenario? There were WMD. See FR keywords WARLIST and PreWarDocs. They are all posted here.
I came across this very well-written and interesting entry on one of my favorite blogs, Media Lies, the other day entitled:Living in the Looney Bin. This was based on his reading of the Iraqi Perspective's Project.
Life in Iraq began to take on a bizarre nature after the Gulf War of 1991. Contrary to logic and reason, Saddam began to fear a coup or overthrow much more than international pressure. While outwardly acting as though he was continuing a WMD program, he privately admitted that the program had been severely curtailed as a result of the war and the subsequent inspections.
Yet his pronouncements on the subject, even to his closest advisors, were so confusing and contradictory that not even they really knew for sure what was going on. Furthermore, Saddam splintered security even further, creating ever more rings of protection around himself and subjecting even his most trusted advisors to the constant scrutiny of the intelligence services.
The intelligence services were even spying on themselves, to the point that one officer complained that they would never have enough spies to spy on all the spies! By the time Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the situation in Iraq had deteriorated to the point that no one in Iraq knew what was true or what was untrue, and many believed the lies that were being routinely told.
Even worse, Saddam made it very clear that he did not want to hear bad news of any kind. (Bearers of bad news were often killed or thrown in prison.) The willingness to lie, to tell Saddam good news even when the opposite was true, became so pervasive that no one, not even Saddam, knew for certain what was true any more. (Anyone who might have known certainly wasn't going to say so publicly.)
Thus Iraq arrived at this bizarre conclusion.
For many months after the 2003 war, a number of senior Iraqi officials continued to believe it possible (though they adamantly insisted they possessed no direct knowledge) that Iraq still possessed a WMD capability hidden away somewhere. In addition to Saddam's purposeful ambiguity on the issue, coalition interviewers discovered three other mutually reinforcing ideas as to why this possibility might be true:
Iraq possessed and used WMD in the past. Given the growing danger from Iran's emerging WMD program, Iraq would likely need them again.
While none of the Iraqi officials admitted to personally knowing of WMD stockpiles, the idea that in a compartmentalized and secretive regime other military units or organizations might have WMD was plausible to them.<'li>
Finally, and ironically, the public confidence of so many Western governments, especially based on CIA information, made at least one senior official believe the contention that Iraq possessed such weapons might be true.17
It should come as no surprise then that world leaders and their intelligence agencies believed that Iraq still had an active WMD program. In fact, even now no one can be certain that they didn't. (The only thing we know for certain is that Saddam had every intention of ramping the program back up as soon as the sanctions were lifted, which he fully expect France and Russia to help him do.)
Rumor has it that Saddam spirited away tons of chemical weapons to Syria right before the war. There is even corroborating evidence to buttress the claim. There is equal evidence that it is untrue, and Syria denies it (for what little that is worth.)
We may never know whether or not Saddam still had WMD when we invaded. There isn't anyone inside Iraq whose word we could trust because even they don't know for certain.
To criticize the administration, then, for not knowing, or for lying about Iraq's WMD programs, ignores the facts. The adamant claims of those who seem certain that Iraq did not possess any WMD on the eve of the war are just as uncertain (and based on equally as confusing and contradictory "evidence") as the adamant claims that Iraq did have WMD. Neither position is provable or disprovable, even inside Iraq!
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You're funny.