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The anthrax I don't know enough about to say. By the mid-nineties any VX he had produce in the eighties was just useless sludge. WIthout ongoing programs, his old VX was a non-entity.

I don't know enough about the biochemistry of anthrax to know about the state of that.

Anyway, you don't quite have your facts straight. They did try to produce evidence that it was destroyed.

Second, there was a dispute between the inspectors and Iraqi scientist about how much they had produced.

Iraq claimed only laboratory quantities. Inspectors claimed that they had the CAPACITY to produce a great deal more.

Nothing undisputed was EVER established about the amounts of anthrax ACTUALLY produced. The confusion over this was due to deliberate adminstration obsfuscation.

Look, there may have been decent geo-political reasons for the war. I'm fairly certain it was broad geo-politics that drove the Bushies. It had nothing whatsoever to do with trumped up WMD and AL Quaeda links. That was all just for public consumption.

You have to understand, this crowd, like almost all political elites, unfortunately, believes that the broad public just needs to be stage managed, not seriously and openly engaged.

Most of the time that's okay. I'm a big, old boy. I've been in lots of battles. I understand how the game works.

But not since the Vietnam has the populace been so severely stage managed into such a questionable adventure.

II'm telling you these folks put LBJ and his bunch to shame.

And please don't call me a liberal. Call me a old fart cynic, whose sent to many frogs in politics to believe that a prince will ever come.

By the mid-nineties any VX he had produce in the eighties was just useless sludge. WIthout ongoing programs, his old VX was a non-entity.

OK, so Iraq admitted that it had produced VX etc in the 80s (which is true), had large stockpiles at one time, but had destroyed them later...presumably before the inspectors entered right after the first gulf war. I'm a little unclear on the exact claims they made, so if they said they got rid of all that stuff pre-GWI (which doesn't agree with Khidhir Hamza's statements) that's one thing. Now, if they still had 'old' VX hanging around, why not just produce the 'sludge' and be done with it? It was useless to them anyway. Maybe they did this, and I just never heard about it, but even if I give you the benefit of the doubt on this, there's plenty of other evidence that Saddam was still trying to develop WMDs. (and as far as anthrax goes--the spores last a long, long, time...)

Now, according to various defectors---and you can be skeptical about them if you like--the work to develop WMDs was continuing under the inspectors' noses at least up until they were kicked out in 1998. According to Hamza, the standoff in 1994-timeframe, in which Iraqis refused to let inspectors make off with a bunch of documents they'd found--involved documents that listed all the personnel involved in the nuclear programs. (The Iraqis slipped in and substituted fake documents for these, and ended the standoff.)

Given that 99% of chem/bio weapon production is dual-use, sure, skeptics can go on and on casting doubt on various finds. With nukes the story is a bit different. So why would a centrifuge be hidden away in this manner? Given the extremely mendacious character of Saddam's regime, I tend to see this as a smoking gun. Why else would a scientist bury a centrifuge in his rose garden? Explain that!

But not since the Vietnam has the populace been so severely stage managed into such a questionable adventure.
II'm telling you these folks put LBJ and his bunch to shame.

I'm reading TREASON by AC today. What you said is almost identical to how she says liberals handle any conflict. Compare everything to Vietnam and LBJ. Read the chapters of her book on VIetnam and then reread your posts today. Hhhmmm?!?!?!?