Excellent, cwb. However, one note.....IMHO, with or without WMD's and even if 9/11 had never happend, Saddam needed to be taken down. I will say this until my dying day, "Operation Iraqi Freedom was justified when based only on the fact that Saddam refused to comply with the UN Resolutions that ended the first Gulf war and allowed him to stay in power." The deaths of all of our military men and women in the Gulf War had been in vain, until Saddam was held accountable for his defiance of the UN Resolutions. The fact that he had WMD's and was a terrorist supporter were excellent, additional reasons for war.
I agree. The moment Saddam started violating the No-Fly zones and shooting at our pilots should've been enough to rescind the cease-fire. Combined with his continual non-adherence to UN weapons inspector demands (especially in 1998) should've wrought severe consequences.
What's so disgusing about the Democrats is that 2-days after Bush's Inauguration, William Cohen wrote an editorial for the NY Times (in conjunction with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace) warning Bush about Saddam's reconstitution of WMDs.
In the editorial Cohen even sites how Clinton's 1998 bombing failed to remove the threat since his intel showed many of these facitilities being rebuilt...especially the one at Fullujah. I always laugh when I hear Clinton claim his 1998 bombing removed the WMD threat...when his own Sec. of Defense said something completely different.