What will be their excuse?....... Saddam was manufacturing a better toothpaste? Was he trying to cure cancer? or was he trying all he could to resume his NBC programs as soon as he could?
Saddam Hussein had his chance to become a member of the civilized world and he chose not to. He called George W. Bush's bluff and lost big. The world is better off and one less murderous dictator is out of power....... When will the NYT's accept this reality?????
You are correct in regard to the bluffing act that SH was performing to the West, to the UN, to his own Iraqi population and to the larger Arab world. For the sake of his own ambition to be the Saladin of the Arab World, his own interests in preserving a sense of honor in the Arab World, his plan to maintain a deterrent force, etc, SH did preserve the fiction that he did have WMD potential. One of the failures of the intelligence not just in CIA but also in American media is in imagination (and the NYT editorial admits as much): we could not conceive why SH would want to trick the world about his WMD capabilities. Well, duh, such a desire to trick an audience is what makes a good salesperson in the bazaar and a powerful dictator of a captive population.