As for me, I've long thought the inspections are a sham: of course Saddam Hussein has WMD (even if they haven't been found). He's had them since the '80s, when we gave them to him to help him in his war against Iran (the enemy du jour of the era).
My reaction to that is: "So what?" He is not a threat to the US, or he certainly would have used them in the last year when President Bush began thumping his war chest. The only time Saddam has used them is in a war, the one with Iran, and some claim, the Kurds. (Actually, the CIA has determined that the chem weapons that hit the Kurds came from Iran, and not Iraq.) I guess we're determined to give him his war and his excuse.
Saddam is not foolish enough to engage the US toe-to-toe in a war; he knows he will lose. But when a fellow has nothing to lose, and is backed into a corner, he will do anything.
So what have we done? We've made it clear that we are going to invade Iraq, no matter what he says he has or doesn't say, or shows what he destroyed (how would one do this? Point to a hole in the ground and say, "There one isn't?") or doesn't show, and no matter what the inspectors find or don't find.
This has been our intent all along: invade Iraq. When the linkages to 11 September were not found, not even circumstantially, we developed this sham of a WMD inspection process. It doesn't matter: we're going to invade.
We've backed him into a corner.
So what is Saddam, the rat backed in the corner with nothing to lose, going to do? He's going to launch his WMD at American troops, maybe at Israel. Why not? I repeat: HE HAS NOTHING TO LOSE. Again: HE HAS NOTHING TO LOSE.
My concerns are not with the inspections (again, a sham, as anything connected to the UN is bound to be) it is with the fact that American troops are going to get chem- or bio-bombed because we want to beat the crap out of Saddam Hussein. The loss of American troops is apparently of little concern to the neo-Con crowd.
But to close your argument: since we were going to invade all along, why didn't Bush launch an attack 30 seconds after his State of the Union speech last year? That would have been something to see, and would have been doing it right. Giving him a year to prepare himself is asinine.
Secondly, please explain to the rest of us how it is Bush would have been politically or logistically prepared to launch a war in Iraq last January. I'd like to hear that one. The fact is, he is always going to have advance warning because we have to deploy, deploy, deploy in order to have enough men and material in place for a mass attack halfway around the world.
I would rather have a president like we have who is willing to take risks to do what is right and in our interests than one who is willing (even eager) to sign agreements with despots that aren't worth the paper they're written on just to avoid doing something potentially damagin to his precious legacy.
Holy cow, you've got some nerve. You made this charge a zillion messages ago, I challenged you on it, you NEVER backed it up, and you're still doing it. I guess I overestimated you.