Okay, I'll be the token Bush supporter! But I'll do it in my own way.
I don't understand all the shock and upset about the evidence for WMD. Of course there wasn't any evidence. Had there actually been persuasive evidence of WMD then the US would have confidentially shared the evidence with France and Germany, and they would have joined the coalition. Since France and Germany did not join us, there must have been no convincing evidence of WMD, and we've known this since before the war began.
There are two things about the WMD that I *do* find surprising. The first is that we not only haven't found any recent evidence of WMD, we can't even seem to find any old evidence. This seems very strange, since we absolutely know Saddam used to have them since he used chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds. Where are the old factories, storage depots, training facilities, etc? Could they really have been eradicated so thoroughly? If so, maybe we should hire Saddam (I hear he's still alive) to do toxic waste cleanup here in the states, because he's apparently *really* good at it.
The second thing I find strange is that many Iraqi units were found well equipped with gas masks, chemical suits and chemical antidote. Why would they burden their units with all this equipment if not for protection from their own chemical weapons? It doesn't make sense.
So my view is that we had insufficient evidence of WMD when we went to war, and therefore the war was wrong (and we're going to pay for it with the "peace"), but that they nonetheless exist out there somewhere.
--Percy
™ Version 4.2
